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Keir Starmer’s Government has been accused by a union leader of bowing to media pressure over civil servants working from home, amid threatened strikes over the issue.
Strikes are brewing in several public sector bodies over demands for staff to return to the office, amid suggestions the Government is bowing to media pressure.
Members of the largest civil service union working at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have voted for all-out strike action over compulsory office attendance, while civilian staff working for the Metropolitan Police are currently balloting for strike action over returning to the office.
Since May, ONS staff in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) have refused to follow an instruction to spend at least 40% of their time in the office, by continuing to work from home. They recently escalated the dispute by refusing to work overtime.
Meanwhile, thousands of PCS union members working for the Land Registry are also balloting for strike action after being ordered back to the office three days a week.
Around 3,800 workers based in 14 Land Registry offices across England and Wales will vote between November 28 and December 23 on whether to walk-out over the request.
Many civil servants are frustrated that Labour has not repealed the demand for (non-frontline) civil servants to be in the office 60% of the week.
PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote told Byline Times that right-wing newspapers including The Telegraph and the Daily Mail have played a role in that.
“The messaging we’re getting [from Government] is it’s not going to be imposed. But it hasn’t been officially withdrawn either. I think it’s because they know, the minute they say something about it, the right-wing media will go mad and say: ‘Here we are, [Labour are] soft on the unions, letting members run away and never be seen again.”
“Labour is trying to face both ways at the moment. They’re trying to be a friend to the unions, saying ‘we’re different from the Tories’, but they’re also trying to appease banks and big business and say: ‘We’ll be the party of business.’”
Heathcote accused departments of setting “arbitrary” targets on working in the office.
“Another Government department has set another arbitrary attendance target without providing any evidence or reason for the decision” she told this paper.
On the ONS strikes, Heathcote argues the industrial action there has, until now, had “no tangible impact” on the ONS’ outputs – “which was the point, because we said our members can work at home just as well, if not better, than being in the office.”
However, the union now has the authority to call a full strike any time in the next six months. “If management wants to ensure the work at ONS remains unaffected, they must engage in meaningful talks with us to end this dispute,” she says.
Clearly, there’s a right-wing media narrative: that Labour is being ‘soft’ on the unions, letting civil servants swan around working from home again
Fran Heathcote, PCS general secretary
Union figures are frustrated that parts of the press conflate a few thousand Whitehall-based civil servants running central Government departments, with the 500,000-strong wider civil service, which spans Job Centre staff to court clerks and pollution inspectors across the UK.
“An average civil servant now, sadly, is on the national minimum wage…and not the typical person with a bowler hat as portrayed by some of the right-wing media,” Heathcote says.
On working from home, she adds: “I think they would love to paint a picture of lazy civil servants sitting at home doing nothing, when in fact, the reality is productivity has gone up, not down, where there is a bit more of an adult conversation and a dialogue. Nobody has died. People have just got on with it and worked very successfully.”
There is a frustration amongst people. Why are we coming back [to the office] just to please the right-wing media, just so that they can’t say ‘lazy civil servants’?
Fran Heathcote, PCS general secretary
The demands to work from offices in some Government bodies comes despite so-called ‘estate management’ programmes meaning offices are being closed to save cash.
Heathcote adds: “In the Department of Work and Pensions, they couldn’t, [even] if they wanted to, facilitate 60% of staff returning to the office, because they’ve lost so much of the Government estate. They frankly don’t have the space to do it.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MCHLG) is closing offices in Truro, Exeter, Warrington, Sheffield, Newcastle and Birmingham, for example, while appearing to resist calls for staff to move to a four-day week.
Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union members working for the Metropolitan Police are being balloted for strike action after being ordered back to the office in the New Year.
The more than 2,400 civilians who support the day-to-day work of police officers say they are angry after managers “reneged” on a deal, dubbed ‘blended’ working, which allowed them to work from home part of the week.
Depending on where they work, the increase in office attendance equates to a day extra a week in the office for full-time staff. The ballot opens on November 6, with the result expected on December 10.
Heathcote says her union recognises not all staff can work from home – or work a four-day week, but where it’s possible and wanted by staff, they should have the option.
PCS members working at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) are campaigning for a four-day working week.
Ben, a PCS rep at MHCLG, says: “A four day week with the same pay would make my dream of having children much more realistic. My partner and I would like to have children, but right now it seems impossible. Fewer days in the office would mean we could share childcare responsibilities.”
It comes after the union claimed the Government could save £21 million a year by allowing Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs staff to work a four-day week.
Statisticians for the union interviewed more than 1,200 workers and estimated staff turnover would reduce annually by 57%, “freeing up the money to hire an additional 2,345 employees.”
The PCS union is in the “early days” of negotiating a “hybrid working agreement” with its 200 or so staff, Heathcote says.
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“We want to try and find a balance that works for our staff. We’ve got staff, like the civil service, that hate working from home…And then, a bit like the civil service, you’ve got others that say, ‘I won’t be coming in because I’ve got a dog’. [I wonder] ‘what did you do before the pandemic?’
“I think we’re typical…We’re not going to be like a [former Conservative Minister] Jacob Rees-Mogg type employer, clearly. We pride ourselves really on being a good employer for the people who work for us…But when I’m in London, I choose to be in Clapham in the office every day because I want to give that message: while I’m here, I expect people to be here. That is starting to have an effect.
“I think there’s a lot you can do by setting that example.”
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