Nokia China may have violated Chinese labor laws as the company sacked about 170 employees after only giving 10 days advanced notice, Shanghai-based National Business Daily (NBD) reported Friday.

File photo shows a corporate logo is displayed at the Nokia flagship store in Helsinki in this picture taken Sept 29, 2010. Nokia, the world's largest phone maker by volume, will lay off 4,000 people and outsource another 3,000 to Accenture as part of a plan to slash annual spending by 1 billion euros ($1.46 billion). Nokia said it would outsource its Symbian software activities to Accenture, who will provide mobility software services to Nokia for future smartphones.[Photo/Agencies]

"Nokia China's layoff at least violates the labor law in terms of procedure and according to the number of employees to be laid off and reasons, it is a staff reduction due to economic reasons" said Zhao Zhanling, an IT law expert and chief advisor of chinaweblaw.com.

The law requires companies to explain to employees or unions the reasons for staff reduction at least 30 days in advance and submit a memo to the related supervisory department before the layoff date, NBD reported.

The former employees came from the Symbian system R&D and service units. This April, Nokia announced large-scale layoffs in Denmark, Finland and UK, mainly from Symbian units.

Compared with employees in Demark, US and UK, employees in China were only given 10 days to make an agreement. Employees were given two choices: termination of the contract or a transfer to Accenture, a management and technology consulting company , NBD reported.

Nokia China Advisory Director Gong Wenfei revealed Thursday that the move was not a layoff due to economic reasons but a strategic restructure. The human resource department of Nokia China also stated that the layoff was legitimate.