Civil servants threaten to boycott the office for an entire year

One thousand public sector staff could resort to strikes to avoid part-time return to workplace

Civil servants are threatening to boycott the office for a year after bosses at Britain’s official statistics agency banned working from home full-time.
More than a thousand staff at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – who belong to the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) – have refused to go into the office since May in protest at being ordered to come in two days a week.
The boycott could now be extended and last for a full year, as the union ballots members for a new mandate to continue action for six more months.
“Management’s mandatory workplace attendance regime does nothing to improve productivity but everything to disrupt the lives of ONS staff, who were led to believe they could continue to work from home indefinitely,” said Fran Heathcote, PCS’s general secretary. 
A PCS spokesman said if that the union secured a yes vote with a turnout of at least 50pc, then staff would continue to refuse to go into the office and refuse any overtime work or doing anything outside of their contract. Members would also consider escalating the dispute to encompass full strike action.
The move comes as Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, criticises efforts by the previous Conservative government to get workers back into the office, singling out a push by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg to ensure workers in Whitehall were at their desks more often.
Mr Reynolds said efforts by Sir Jacob to encourage a culture of office working were “bizarre”.
Targets across government departments generally require civil servants to attend the office for at least 60pc of their contracted hours, allowing two days a week to be spent at home. 
However, civil service job adverts posted since Labour came to power seem to be out of step with the target, requesting just two days a week of office work. 
Whitehall sources said they were keen to go into the office more, but due to a lack of space could end up working on the floor of office corridors. 
A growing number of companies in the private sector are cracking down on remote working, with Amazon telling its white-collar workers that they must turn up at the office five days a week from next year. 
Last year, Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, also praised working in the office, saying there was “just no substitute for coming together in person”.
The PCS said earlier this year that many staff already spent 40pc of their working time in the office, but that mandated attendance would remove flexibility “for the sake of meeting an unnecessary attendance percentage”. 
An ONS spokeswoman said: “It would be wrong to say there’s a boycott of office working – the industrial action is over the 40pc mandatory office attendance policy, which is not the same thing. 
“It should also be noted that the dispute involves only around a quarter of ONS’ total workforce. We do not expect disruption to our statistical outputs.”