About 700 workers are employed at Nortel's Monkstown plant

The meeting on Friday followed an announcement of plans by Canadian-owned firm Nortel to sell off part of its operations to Flextronics.

About 700 workers are employed at Nortel's plant in Monkstown.

Singapore-based electronics company Flextronics plans to take over most of Nortel's manufacturing operations, including work done in Canada, France and Northern Ireland.

About 350 people are involved in these operations at the County Antrim factory, which makes telecommunications transmission equipment.

The key question is whether the new company will keep the manufacturing work in Northern Ireland or take it abroad if the sale worth up to $500m goes ahead.

Flextronics has declined to comment on whether it would continue to carry out the work in Monkstown or whether it would be transferred to another location.

Nortel said that neither its management nor its research and development operations would be affected.

Anger

Eddie Miller from the union Amicus said he was angry that Nortel's employees were the last to find out about doubt over jobs at the plant.

"I knew about it through the media contacting me - the company hadn't contacted me, and therefore I am extremely angry that the media knew before trade unions and employees," he said.

"I will be telling them quite honestly that I don't believe them that the talks are at an early stage - I believe they are at a very advanced stage and that the deal is in fact done."

More than 2,000 people worked at Nortel's Monkstown plant at its peak in 2000, but it was hit by a series of redundancies.

BBC Northern Ireland business editor James Kerr said it was only in the last few months that things were beginning to pick up again.

The County Antrim factory is Nortel's largest optical systems house in Europe.

The company is a subsidiary of the Canadian-owned global hi-tech corporation which operates in 100 countries.