The payment comprises $287m compensation for 2300 staff, and $23m for an initiative that is designed to find new jobs for the workers.

The settlement amounts to more than double the sum Nokia initially offered to relocate its factory from Bochum, Germany, to a lower cost location in Romania, where labour costs are almost 10 times cheaper.

Nokia is also facing demands from the German state to repay $93m in investment subsidies that it received in the 1990s for basing its manufacturing plant in the town of Bochum.

Nokia said it had already fulfilled the conditions attached to the subsidies and therefore was not obliged to repay them. North Rhine-Westphalia, the authority covering Bochum, has threatened legal action.