The Daily Telegraph - Saturday

Civil servants refuse to be ‘forced back’ for two days in the office

- By Genevieve Holl-Allen The Telegraph:

CIVIL servants at Britain’s official statistics body have refused to be “forced back” into the office for two days a week.

More than 1,000 employees at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have said that they will not go back to the office for 40 per cent of the week.

The staff, who are members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, have already voted in favour of strikes and other forms of industrial action in protest at the drive for more office-based working.

The union said that from May 8, the employees based in Newport, South Wales, Titchfield in Hampshire, London, Darlington, Manchester and Edinburgh, will not comply with the instructio­n.

Last year, civil servants were told that they should be in the office more than three days a week rather than working from home much of the time.

The drive for more staff to return to the office was prompted by concerns about drops in productivi­ty.

PCS said that many staff already willingly spend 40 per cent of their working time in the office, but said that mandated attendance would remove flexibilit­y “for the sake of meeting an unnecessar­y attendance percentage”.

A spokesman said: “Following a promise by management that staff could continue to work flexibly after the Covid pandemic, some workers started families, moved house and made other long-term commitment­s, safe in the knowledge, they thought, their working conditions were secure.”

Fran Heathcote, the PCS general secretary, said: “Our members are a highly skilled and capable workforce and they deserve to be treated as such, showing for several years they can successful­ly manage hybrid working.

“The new policy threatens serious disruption, especially for staff with childcare and other caring responsibi­lities, and those who live a considerab­le distance from their designated office.

“The workforce at ONS is spread across the UK, meaning that regardless of where staff perform their work, most meetings and collaborat­ion must have a virtual presence.

“Mandated office attendance removes the flexibilit­y and trust that was promised to staff by senior leaders, which staff understand­ably shaped their lives around, for the sake of meeting an unnecessar­y attendance percentage.”

It comes just days after Rishi Sunak said that the boost in defence spending announced this week would be partly funded by cutting 70,000 Whitehall jobs, bringing the Civil Service back to pre-Brexit levels.

As he set out his desire to cut Civil Service jobs, Jeremy Hunt earlier this year told “I think overall, there are definitely areas where we are employing more people than we should.”

Responding to the comments at the time, Ms Heathcote said: “I will not take lessons in morality from a Chancellor who thinks it’s acceptable for tens of thousands of our hard-working members to lose their jobs in an attempt to win some votes. He says public sector waste is immoral because it’s taking money out of taxpayers’ pockets. Does he not realise the civil servants he wants to see lose their jobs are taxpayers too?”

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