The problem with threatened strike action by Scottish civil servants over working from home

Until the Covid pandemic hit, office working was the norm for many people, and the few who worked from home usually did so perhaps one or two days a week. But even new habits, it seems, can die hard. Civil servants working for the Scottish government and staff at four quangos – Social Security Scotland, Community Justice Scotland, Transport Scotland and Disclosure Scotland – are being balloted about potential strike action over efforts to persuade them to work in their offices on two days a week.

According to the PCS union, the government’s requirement that staff should be office-based 40 per cent of the time is “unacceptable”. READ MORE: SNP's top civil servant 'not scared' of unions despite not monitoring workers' return to office Ruby Gibson, the union’s national officer for Scotland, complained this was an “arbitrary target” and argued that “public services can be delivered effectively through flexible and hybrid working”. Home working enabled “better work-life balance, improved productivity and a more inclusive workforce, including for disabled workers...”, she said.

Gibson added that “rather than building on those gains, the Scottish government is... replacing trust with surveillance, flexibility with rigid targets and constructive employment relations with the threat of disciplinary action”. For those who buy such arguments, it may sound rather sinister. However, working in an office two days a week is hardly worthy of Orwellian rhetoric about surveillance. It’s not that long ago that virtually every office worker, well, worked in an office.

READ MORE: Anger as civil servants told: if you don't like it then you are free to leave Flexible working does have its place, and to a much greater degree than before the pandemic. The ability to do so has become part of the negotiations between employer and employee, alongside pay and other conditions. Many people regard it as a benefit in kind and a positive incentive to take a job. However, there are also considerable benefits from working together in the same place with colleagues – particularly the passing on of knowledge from seasoned veterans to younger, more inexperienced staff.

That kind of inherited knowledge is vital to most organisations and especially so for those charged with the smooth running of government. We hope civil servants remember who they serve and who pays their wages, and vote against strike action.