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Disputes over office attendance are spreading across the UK’s public sector, with staff at the Land Registry set to take indefinite industrial action from this month after being ordered back to their desks.
The Public and Commercial Services union said on Wednesday that 4,000 of its members working at 14 of the agency’s offices in England and Wales would refuse to cover for colleagues or take on extra duties from January 21 onwards, after voting in favour of strike action in December.
The union is disputing a new requirement for staff to attend the office three days a week — which became the rule across the civil service last year. It is also concerned about a new system for tracking individuals’ performance and says staff have been given more duties without extra pay.
The three-day requirement is less stringent than that faced by many private sector white-collar workers, as big employers clamp down on homeworking.
WPP, the advertising group, this week became the latest big employer to tighten its office attendance rules, following similar moves from PwC, Santander, Asda and Amazon.
The Centre for Cities think-tank last year found that government workers in London were spending less time in the office than private sector peers, coming in for 2.2 days a week on average, compared with 2.4 days a week for finance workers and 2.6 days across the private sector.
But unions representing public sector workers say that expanding access to hybrid and other forms of flexible working, rather than limiting it, will be crucial against a backdrop of tight pay restraint.
Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, which speaks for the UK’s union movement, told the Financial Times in a recent interview that flexible work would be key to addressing a recruitment and retention crisis in the NHS, schools and across the wider public sector.
“Of course, teachers could do preparation for lessons outside of the school environment, and if that allowed them to balance their work and life a little bit more effectively, that would be a good thing,” he said, adding: “I don’t think there is a one size fits all way of delivering public services.”
The PCS is already leading industrial action over office attendance rules at the Office for National Statistics, where staff have been taking action short of a strike since May. PCS members working in the Met Police Service began industrial action as a result of a similar dispute this week.
The union is also campaigning for a four-day week for its members at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The Land Registry said the PCS action would have a “minimal impact” on its services and that it would respond as needed to maintain essential services supporting the property market.
However, the agency is still struggling to clear backlogs that built up during the post-pandemic housing boom, and has been both recruiting extra caseworkers and seeking to step up automation.
Fran Heathcote, PCS general secretary, said the Land Registry’s management had imposed changes to working conditions without prior agreement and needed to find a solution to “regain some of the goodwill required to make progress”.
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