The civil service’s biggest union will re-ballot members at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on their appetite for strike action over the department’s ongoing restructuring programme.
PCS said it will launch the new ballot for FCDO staff on 18 May after a vote that closed last month fell short of securing the 50% turnout required for industrial action to be legal.
The previous poll, which ran from 16 March to 20 April, found resounding support for strike action among those who participated. PCS said that 76.9% of members voted in favour of strike action and 93.8% gave their backing to action short of strike.
But only 48.8% of members at the department cast ballots. PCS has now said that only 19 additional members would have been needed to vote for the turnout to have reached 50%, securing a legal mandate for strike action.
PCS said: “For the re-ballot, the branch has strengthened our methods and approach and is confident we can achieve over the 50% turnout threshold this time.”
The dispute centres around the controversial FCDO 2030 restructure plan, which comes against the backdrop of 17% administrative funding cuts imposed on the department in last year’s comprehensive Spending Review. By some estimates, around 2,000 jobs are expected to be lost. A voluntary exit scheme for FCDO staff was also launched last year.
Announcing the re-ballot, PCS accused FCDO of refusing to “engage meaningfully” with staff unions or pause the restructure despite requests to do so – including from MPs.
It said management had failed to provide the assurances needed to resolve the dispute, which PCS initiated in November last year.
The union said its dispute centres on FCDO’s stated intention of making job cuts of up to 25%, allegations that the department has failed to “meaningfully consult” PCS on the restructure – including lack of business case for job cuts, and no workforce plan or equality impact assessment –and the refusal to guarantee there will be no compulsory redundancies.
“FCDO’s current approach to restructuring will create an unstable future for all civil servants,” the union said. “It will weaken UK influence and the impact of programmes we all work on and care about. It will set a precedent for the organisation and for the rest of the civil service that involves ignoring or bypassing existing organisational policies and national agreements.”
Sarah Champion, who is chair of parliament’s International Development Committee, has described the FCDO’s planned headcount cuts as “incredibly short-sighted” given the number of ongoing international crises.
And Dame Emily Thornberry, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has accused FCDO of apparently “restructuring in order to restructure, while not looking first and foremost at what the Foreign Office is about, what we should be doing, and how we can ensure that we retain the expertise, the knowledge, the connections, the best people, in order to deliver those priorities”.
In March, FCDO minister Chris Elmore said the resctructure aims to “build an organisation that is agile, innovative and equipped to seize the opportunities of the day”.
He said the FCDO 2030 plans “build on deep expertise, which I know is a concern for colleagues, and on the professionalism and commitment that the civil service brings to Britain’s diplomacy and development work every single day”.
“Our workforce reforms are designed to strengthen that foundation, with officials developing a clear sequenced strategy supported by a department-wide assessment of our skills, capabilities and requirements,” he added. “We want to improve those things, not lessen them, and that can be done, among other things, through the skills audit.”
An FCDO spokesperson expressed disappointment at PCS’s decision to call a new ballot but said the department respects the right of staff to strike.
“It is regrettable that PCS have decided to ballot members on strike action,” the spokesperson said. “While we are seeking to avoid compulsory redundancies, we cannot commit to ruling out all routes during a significant restructure. We remain committed to continuing constructive engagement with all our recognised trade unions on this and other workforce matters.”
PCS’s re-ballot will run from May 18 to June 22.