MHCLG updates

Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) at the Ministry of Housing, Community, and Local Government (MHCLG) will launch selective strikes from 24 September, as they continue their fight to resist office-attendance mandates, and to oppose office closures. This is in addition to their “Action Short Of Strike”, which is work in the office (rather than home) only when they want to.

The first wave of strikes involves workers in the department’s finance directorate, who will strike from 24 September to 6 October. Workers in the resilience, emergencies and recovery directorate strike from 1 to 8 October. The strikes are designed to effectively utilise the power of workers with immediate leverage over critical procedures.

Wants

PCS says it wants the employer to:

• re-enter talks on the fundamental decision to close offices, with the aim of saving as many offices as possible, and ensuring no staff member loses pay or personal time travelling to work due to office closures.

• implement a progressive and flexible office attendance policy, placing staff choice at its heart, by re-engaging with PCS proposals to prevent detriment or disciplinary action to staff. Management must also consider removing individual compliance monitoring in favour of an organisational-wide approach.

• formalise a fair recruitment policy that prevents the decline and deterioration of regional offices, stops unjustified unequal treatment between locations and provides future assurances to members that current policy about where they can be based will not be unilaterally eroded.

The PCS branch at MHCLG describes its dispute as an “Our Work, Our Way” campaign, fighting not only over office-attendance mandates but for greater worker control over how work is organised.

We reported in Solidarity 773 that Angela Rayner, the Secretary of State for Housing, had agreed to meet union representatives. At the time of writing, Rayner was yet to act on this commitment.