Staff at UK financial watchdog fight review on increasing office attendance

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Staff at the UK financial watchdog are threatening industrial action if they are told to be in the office more than the current rule of at least 40 per cent of their working days each month. 

Union officials and staff representatives at the Financial Conduct Authority have gone on the offensive after the regulator recently started consultations with employees on reducing how much they work from home.

Unite, the union with the most members at the FCA, has written an open letter to the regulator’s executives warning that 93 per cent of respondents in a poll said they would support industrial action short of a strike if they had to spend longer in the office. Based on a five-day week, the current 40 per cent rule requires eight days a month in the office.

The regulator’s staff representative group wrote separately to the FCA’s executives, warning they “feel let down and this is not the first time”. The watchdog’s “failure to conduct an orderly process” brings into doubt the staff representative group’s ability “to carry out its function”, it added.

A host of orders by many financial services groups in the City of London to increase office attendance closer to pre-pandemic rates has increased pressure on regulators to follow suit. Some big banks, such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have rejected remote working outright. 

“Organisations across the globe are considering what way of working is best to achieve their objectives,” the FCA said. “Many, in both the private and public sector, have increased their office attendance from initial post-pandemic levels.”

The FCA allows most staff to work from home 60 per cent of their monthly working days. For team leaders and more senior staff the stipulation for being in the office or on assignment rises to half of their working days each month.

When the regulator told its 5,000 staff in September 2024 that it had decided to maintain arrangements for hybrid working until the end of 2025, it added that this would be reviewed and any decision would be announced at the start of next year.

The FCA said it was seeking to “give colleagues certainty about our long-term approach”, adding that it was “considering our organisational needs, colleagues’ views’, practices elsewhere and what the latest research shows”.

When the FCA moved its headquarters in 2018 from Canary Wharf to what many staff consider a less attractive location in Stratford a couple of miles to the north, the appeal of working from home rose. The authority also has offices in Leeds and Edinburgh.

Union officials also rejected the idea that the watchdog should respond to trends in private sector workplaces.

“The FCA cannot match private sector pay, and moving closer to private sector working conditions can only damage our ability to attract and retain the talent on which we rely to carry out our public functions,” Unite said.

The union has had a turbulent relationship with the FCA since it failed to secure the right to formally represent its employees shortly after calling the watchdog’s first strike action among its 600 members three years ago.

Unite said FCA management was “once again completely out of touch with its workforce”.

“The committed and hardworking staff across the organisation continue to face an intransigent boss who fails to listen to them,” it said, adding: “Union representatives at the FCA have consistently told the leadership of the need to grasp the concerns of workers, [but] these pleas continue to fall on deaf ears causing ongoing industrial tension and conflict.”