UK statisticians threaten strike action over back-to-office mandate

Staff at the UK’s statistics agency are threatening strike action after being ordered back to the office as part of a wider ministerial clampdown on homeworking across the civil service.

Around 1,200 workers at the Office for National Statistics, who are members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, began voting on potential industrial action this week in protest at a new requirement to attend the office two days a week, which will take effect in April.

The PCS said that since the Covid pandemic, the ONS had given staff full flexibility to work where they want and many of its members had accepted jobs at the agency on that understanding.

The new mandate will leave many employees in a difficult position, the union claimed, with childcare arrangements that cannot be changed swiftly and one member of staff being asked to commute from as far away as Carlisle in northern England to the ONS’ main site in Newport, in south Wales.

Fran Heathcote, PCS general secretary, said it was “a mystery why managers have changed their minds” after regularly reassuring staff the previous arrangements could continue. She added that no business case had been made for the decision, and post-pandemic arrangements at the ONS had been “an example of best practice”.

The dispute underlines the risk of back-to-office mandates inflaming workplace relations, as employers seek to roll back freedoms that many workers have come to rely on since the pandemic.

The drive to bring public sector workers back to the office mirrors a push by large private sector employers. Many banks and professional services firms have started to monitor office attendance and take a tougher approach to enforcing hybrid work policies.

Recruiters say this change of tack is becoming an obstacle to filling vacancies, as potential candidates are wary of losing flexible arrangements they have agreed informally with their existing employers.

The ONS will still allow its staff more flexibility than other government departments, most of whom will require staff to spend 60 per cent of their time in the office from April, up from 40 per cent.

John Glen, Cabinet Office minister, said earlier this year that senior civil servants would be judged on whether they had achieved this 60 per cent attendance target in annual appraisals.

An ONS spokesperson said the agency had used a hybrid working model for some years, which always required colleagues to attend the office according to business needs. It had recently “clarified” this requirement but was applying it “flexibly to help balance business and personal needs”, with “extensive support” for all colleagues.