Civil servants to take indefinite industrial action after being ordered back to office
Indefinite industrial action is to be taken by thousands of civil servants working at the Land Registry in a dispute over office attendance.
Around 4,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) based in 14 offices across England and Wales will take part in the action from 21 January.
The union said its members had been ordered back to the office for three days a week.
From 21 January they will refuse to cover for their colleagues or take on extra work outside their job description or grade.
PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “Our members at the Land Registry are disappointed the employer imposed changes to their working conditions without prior agreement.
“We call on management to work with us to find a solution that’s fair and acceptable to our members.
“It would cost them nothing and might help Land Registry regain some of the goodwill required to make progress in clearing the huge backlogs of work.”
PCS members working at the Office for National Statistics have already voted for strike action over compulsory office attendance, while union members at the Metropolitan Police will take industrial action from next week in a similar dispute.
The PCS is also campaigning for a four-day week for workers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
A Land Registry spokesman said: “We believe this action will cause minimal impact to our services.
“We will continue to closely monitor any effects the action may have and respond as needed to maintain essential services that support the property market, such as searches, registrations (including expedites), and customer contact, as we did during previous periods of full industrial action.”
The action will come after Morning Wire reported that staff at FTSE 100 ad giant WPP will be made to come into the office four days a week under a new policy announced to staff just weeks before it is set to lose its crown as the world’s largest advertising firm to Publicis.
Boss Mark Read confirmed the policy change at the London-listed media behemoth, which owns the likes of Ogilvy, Burson and GroupM, in an email to staff on Tuesday.
Under the new global rules, staff across the group’s dozens of markets are to attend the office at least four days a week from April onwards, including a move to mandate all staff to attend the office for at least two Fridays a month.