Camerons to dump or relocate a third of support staff
28 January 2011
It's a bleak start to the year for support staff at CMS Cameron McKenna, a third of whom face either redundancy or relocation as a result of the firm's deal with outsourcing company Integreon. And that’s relocation as in Bristol or, err, India.

Camerons is the latest in a line of firms attempting to drive down overheads through outsourcing. Details of the cuts were revealed to employees this week in an internal memo from Managing Partner Duncan Weston. And it looks like over half the support staff in Cameron's London office are likely to be affected. Of the 200 business support roles in the City, around 33 will be given the elbow, according to a report in Legal Week. And of the remainder a lucky 76 will be up for relocation.

Camerons' support staff preparing to relocate yesterday

Soundbites such as "constant innovation in the way we do business", "flexibility to scale support services" and "a unified business model" may help the partners feel better about everything. But they're probably not a huge comfort to the poor sods who are being asked to uproot their lives and move 100 miles across the country or 4,000 miles across the world.

The consultation process is currently on-going, so support staff face an anxious wait to learn their fate. The firm has previous for screwing up redundancy announcements, so let's hope it's learnt from its mistakes.