Office for National Statistics staff have voted to renew their mandate for industrial action over the department’s hybrid working policy.
In a ballot of PCS union members which closed on Monday, civil servants at the ONS once again voted in favour of strike action and action short of strike, giving the union another six-month mandate for industrial action.
PCS said 69% of its ONS members voted to strike, a slight uptick from 68% in the previous ballot that ended on 31 March. The union also reported that 92% of ONS members voted to take action short of a strike in the ballot that closed on Monday, compared to 91% in the last ballot.
The PCS union has been in dispute with ONS since April 2024 over changes to its hybrid working policies. It has now held four statutory ballots and taken continuous industrial action since May 2024. The action began as non-compliance with the ONS’s mandated 40% office-attendance target, with working to rule added in the first escalation in August 2024.
In July this year, civil servants at the non-ministerial department escalated industrial action further by instigating a zero office-attendance policy and increasing their use of work to rule.
PCS said more than 1,100 of its members working in Newport, Titchfield, London, Darlington, Manchester and Edinburgh have taken action short of strike since May 2024.
PCS claim the action “has had no tangible impact on the ONS’s outputs” and that this supports the union's argument that there is “no need for a more restrictive attendance policy”.
The union also pointed to “wider systematic failings” at the ONS, which have attracted criticism from a parliamentary inquiry and from the Devereux review in June, which found “deep-seated issues” in the department. PCS said the failures to resolve the ongoing dispute are “symptomatic” of these issues. It also said it hopes the ONS’s new permanent secretary, Darren Tierney, “will demonstrate a greater commitment to resolving our dispute” than his predecessor Sir Ian Diamond.
Diamond said last month that he felt the ONS's HR team had got a "bad press" over its handling of hybrid working. "I felt that the HR team put an enormous amount of effort into meeting individually with colleagues to look at their personal circumstances and work out the best solution," Diamond said.
PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “This is the fourth time we’ve won a ballot in this dispute, reflecting the resolve among PCS members at ONS to not accept arbitrary office attendance targets.
“These targets do nothing to improve productivity and everything to disrupt the lives of ONS staff. We hope, with this renewed mandate from our members, that the new ONS membership will now work with us to resolve this dispute and avoid further escalation to strike action.”
An ONS spokesperson said: “We are working hard to address pressing issues with our key statistics and it is important this dispute is resolved as soon as possible. A reasonable level of office attendance – in line with the wider civil service – is in the best interests of the ONS and of all our colleagues. Face-to-face interaction helps people to build working relationships and supports collaboration, innovation and learning."