Civil servants to strike over office work rule

Union accuses ONS bosses of ‘undermining trust and goodwill of their staff with heavy-handed policy’

CIVIL SERVANTS are expected to go on strike after being asked to work in the office for two days a week.

Staff at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have worked from home since the start of lockdown and have now voted for industrial action to allow them to keep doing so.

Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of voting employees are in favour of walkouts following bosses’ demands for a “40% physical workplace attendance” from this month.

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which is spearheading the push for action, has called for talks with ONS officials to resolve the dispute.

It previously argued that many workers only accepted a job at the ONS because of home working, saying that the plan to force workers to spend at least 40pc of their time in the office has “caused considerable disruption, especially for staff with childcare and other caring arrangements”.

Fran Heathcote, general secretary of PCS, said that ONS bosses had “seriously undermined the trust and goodwill of their staff by seeking to drive this policy through in such a heavy-handed way”. She called for the policy to be paused immediately.

It is the latest pushback from staff who want to continue working from home as bosses increasingly demand an end to remote practices.

Ministers have been trying to pressure Whitehall staff back into the office at least 60pc of the time, or three days a week for full-time staff, over fears that working from home has reduced productivity and increased waiting times for services. About 1,200 employees balloted for a strike but only half of that number voted, a turnaround that only just hit the legal threshold for a ballot.

An ONS spokesman said that the organisation has had a hybrid working model for several years, in line with the wider civil service. He added: “Face-toface interaction supports collaboration and fosters learning and innovation, while some tasks can be done as effectively or even more effectively at home.

“We are applying this flexibly to help balance business and personal needs, and have offered all colleagues extensive support.”

Earlier this week it emerged that half of HM Revenue and Customs staff in Whitehall are still working from home, despite complaints over customer service. Only 53 per cent of civil servants working in HMRC’s headquarters were at their desks in an average week between January and March, Telegraph analysis of official data shows.

At the start of this year, waiting times to speak to an HMRC adviser on the phone hit a record high of 25 minutes for those who got through.

In January, a report by the spending watchdog the National Audit Office found that the organisation had been getting its sums wrong on tax breaks.