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BOOM BOOM: Dixons fires the human cannon

Pleased to say we only fired we were able to keep half of the colleagues placed at risk

Dixons claims to have fired about 50 workers out the redundancy cannon in its latest battle against the human costs of doing business.

At least 100 staff based at the Hemel Hempstead office were put on a 45-day notice of redundancy in early May, just days before Dixons went public with the £3.7bn Carphone Warehouse mega borg.

According to Dixons at the time, the manpower reduction had nothing to do with the merger, and that is a line PR is sticking to despite folk internally making the link.

"The consultation has concluded now and I'm pleased to say we were able to keep about half of the colleagues placed at risk," said a PR person on behalf of the retailer.

Under UK employment law, a company planning to lay off 100 or more souls must enter into a month and a half long consultation. Dixons' Hemel HQ employs around 1k staff including buyers, techies, the legal team, retail support, planning and analytics people.

Dixons told us the bunch that stayed within the business have been redeployed but was light on details of where they went or the departments where the redundancies were made.

The company simply said the job reductions were part of a cost-cutting programme, saying that "every so often we view our structures and systems".

But employees aren't convinced that the pending marriage with CPW has nothing to do with the rationalisation.

"People have been putting two and two together," said one insider.

According to our source, Dixons and CPW's respective CEOs Seb James and Andrew Harrison have been "doing a whistle-stop tour" of Dixons' sites" that staff suspect is part of the early stage planning for the expanded business.

The companies are not expected to shutter lots of stores as Dixons has a larger footprint in retails parks than High Street stalwart CPW.

Dixons reports fiscal '14 prelims on Thursday. ®

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