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UK Financial Watchdog staff are threatening industrial measures if they are told to stay in their offices beyond the current rules of at least 40% of monthly business days.
After regulators recently began consultations with employees, financial conduct authorities’ union officials and staff representatives took the attack after reducing how much they work from home.
Unite is the union with the FCA’s most members, with 93% of voter respondents writing an open letter to cadres officials saying they support industrial measures other than strikes if they need to spend longer in the office. Based on a 5-day week, the current 40% rule requires 8 days a month in the office.
A group of staff representatives from the regulator wrote separately to FCA executives, warning that “I feel disappointed, but this is not the first time.” The “failure to implement the orderly process” of Watchdog doubts the ability of the representative group of staff to “perform that function.”
Many orders by many London financial services groups have pressured regulators to follow suit by increasing attendance at offices close to the pre-patient rate. Several major banks, such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have completely refused to operate remotely.
“Organisations around the world are considering what work is best to achieve their goals,” the FCA said. “In both the private and public sectors, many people have increased their office attendance from early pandemic levels.”
The FCA allows most staff to work from home for 60% of their monthly business days. For team leaders and more senior staff, the provisions for being in the office and assignments rise to half of the monthly business day.
When the regulator told its 5,000 staff in September 2024 that it had decided to maintain the hybrid work arrangement until the end of 2025, it added that this would be reviewed and the decision would be announced early next year.
The FCA said “we want to ensure that we give colleagues about our long-term approach,” adding that it “considers the needs of the organization, their opinions, elsewhere and what the latest research shows.”
The appeal of working from home when the FCA moved its headquarters from Canary Wharf in 2018, when many staff became what was considered an unattractive place in Stratford, a few miles north. Authorities also have offices in Leeds and Edinburgh.
Union officials also rejected the idea that Watchdog should respond to trends in the private sector workplace.
“The FCA cannot match private sector wages. Getting closer to private sector working conditions only undermines our ability to attract and retain the talents we rely on to perform public functions,” Unite says.
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The union has developed a turbulent relationship with the FCA as it failed to secure the right to formally represent its employees shortly after calling the Watchdog’s first strike action three years ago.
Unite said FCA management “is not fully in contact with that workforce again.”
“The dedicated and hardworking staff throughout the organization continue to face incompatible bosses who cannot hear them,” he said.
