The police staff refusing to go back to the office

Yahoo

14-02-2025

Anyone passing Marlowe House in Sidcup in south-east London this week will have witnessed a piece of history being made – although it might have looked like 20 cold people with placards and flags in matching red beanies.
In recent years we've seen all sorts of workers go on strike, from doctors to tube drivers to Deliveroo drivers, but this is the first time that those on the picket line have been from the Metropolitan Police.
Hundreds of civilian staff working for the Met have begun a two-week strike action – the first in its history – over requests for staff to return to the office full-time.
Although it might seem surprising that employees with roles in the police force can work from home at all, those involved in the industrial action have 'backroom jobs', disrupting services such as clearing people through vetting and updating the Police National Database (PND).
But the historic dispute appears to have sown anger and distrust within the ranks of London's police service.
'Not all staff are needed operationally in the office, or on site, seven days a week,' said a police source. 'But it is fair to say some staff have taken advantage of practices since the pandemic.'
The Met have been insistent that the strike will not have any impact on regular police operations but Matt Cane, general secretary of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said: 'The irony of this strike will not be lost on our hard-working members who are out on the streets of London 24 hours a day, seven days a week, keeping the capital safe.'
But the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), who represent those taking action, remain unapologetic.
'Our members are not bobbies on the beat,' says Fran Heathcote, general secretary of the PCS. 'They are desk-based civilians who work from home just as productively as if they were in the office, but without the stress and cost of a daily commute.'
She adds: 'It's time politicians and the Right-wing media stopped their obsession with telling people where they have to work and started listening to the evidence of academics, employers and employees that shows working from home is a perfectly viable option for many people.'
Katie* (not her real name), has worked for the Met for five years in a research-based role and is one of those on strike. A single mother, she says working from home is helpful for managing family life.
'When I accepted this job and signed my contract it said I'd be working from home three days, and in the office for two days. Now they want me in the office three days a week. I have high-functioning autism and I'm much more productive and focused at home.
'On the days when I drive to the office I can spend hours on the motorway stuck in traffic. When people say things like, 'policing is a contact sport', that's just not true of my role, which never involves face-to-face contact with the public. This is 2025, it's not the dinosaur age. I think calling us back to the office shows a real lack of trust, especially given the jobs that we do.'
Unlike many companies, including Amazon, McKinsey, JPMorgan Chase and Tesco, the Met is not mandating that all its staff return back to the office full-time. The disputed policy would require staff to work in the office for between 60 per cent and 100 per cent of the time, so there is still some flexibility. But the PCS says changes in rules to hybrid working would affect 2,400 people who support the day-to-day work of police officers, and would disproportionately impact women, part-time workers and those with disabilities.
When the move was suggested last year, 85 per cent of PCS members backed industrial action and 91 per cent voted for action short of a strike (ie non compliance). But the row became more intense after management threatened to deduct members' pay for any day a member of staff worked from home. PCS subsequently announced that more than 300 members in the reference and vetting department would cease work from Feb 4-17.
Although support staff are the only ones striking, they're not the only ones affected. Many of the Met's 46,000 workers have regularly worked from home since the practice was introduced during the Covid pandemic. Indeed, when the return-to-office policy was announced in September, one source said: 'No one knows where staff will go, so many buildings have been sold off. Staff are not happy. Expect mass resignations.'
Indeed, one of the key aspects of the row focuses on the fact that when working conditions were agreed in 2021, PCS members believed the structure would be in place for the rest of their working lives.
'A lot of our members feel this arrangement has been snatched away from them,' said PCS union rep Anna Bruce-Hou, when challenged on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'A lot of them have made life-changing decisions like moving out of London or rearranging their childcare, many have caring or disability needs and some of them are really struggling with the imposition of this increase in office attendance.'
Bruce-Hou insisted that although only 300 are striking, 'a lot of our members are working in these conditions under protest', and says that a working from home arrangement hasn't just been in place post-Covid.
'We had smarter working before the pandemic and a lot of these changes have come in after,' she points out. 'A lot of our members were recruited under these [flexible] ]working conditions, so they were promised this when they applied for the job and have had it taken away from them many months after they started the job.'
But a Met spokesman said: 'The vast majority of our hard-working staff are complying with the new hybrid working policy. The small percentage intending to strike are part of our vetting and referencing teams. Public services like call handling and other frontline roles will be not be affected but, as you would expect, we have full contingency plans in place.
'We have been engaging with our staff and trade unions for over a year on this policy, which is in line with many other organisations. Ultimately, this is about our commitment to delivering a better service for Londoners.'
Metropolitan Police staff are just the latest workers to take industrial action over calls to give up their WFH perks. Civil servants working for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), staff at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and those working for the Land Registry, have all voted to go on strike recently, after bosses told them to get back to their desks for part of the week.
Interestingly, it's actually illegal for police and prison officers in the UK to go on strike, which makes this week's action 'hugely significant' according to Dr Nick McKerrell, a senior lecturer in law at Glasgow Caledonian University, who specialises in police structures and powers.
'The police have been banned from striking since 1919, when the Police Act was first established after strikes in London and Liverpool saw almost every constable and sergeant refuse to go on duty,' says Dr McKerrell.
A century ago, the strikes among so-called 'Bolshevik Bobbies' were about pay disputes, not flexible working. 'We policemen see young van boys and slips of girls earning very much more than we get and, well, it makes us feel very sore,' said a policeman earning £1.5d a week during the 1918 strike.
Prime Minister Lloyd George eventually gave in to their pay demands, but the strikes in Liverpool led to four days of rioting.
Over the decades, governments have believed the police would never strike, relying on the goodwill of officers adhering to the maxim of Robert Peel, the creator of the modern police force, who said: 'The police are the public; the public are the police.'
Dr Nick McKerrell says that historically police have been paid significantly more than other public sector workers, even under Thatcher, but says that with inflation over recent decades that privilege has eroded.
'Officers don't have a trade union, they have the Police Federation and it's partially funded by the government. Negotiations on pay in the past have led the Police Federation to ballot its members to see if they would like the right to strike – in 2008 and 2013 – but there wasn't enough support for the law to be changed,' he says.
Although they can't withdraw their labour, police officers can take other forms of action to show their dissatisfaction. In fact, Police Scotland have recently been 'withholding goodwill' in order to negotiate a pay rise.
'This is when police don't do anything above and beyond their contractual obligations,' says McKerrell. 'So they weren't turning up early for shifts, they were not taking police radios home. That dispute has recently been resolved,' he says.
So if police in the UK are banned from going on strike, are those on the picket line this week breaking the law? 'There's a difference between police officers and civilian staff employed by the police,' says McKerrell. 'Because they're civilians not officers they don't have the same restrictions placed on them about strike action.'
Police and prison officers are legally banned from striking, although other industries have agreements with the government. The Royal College of Nursing has a ruling that nurses can only walk out where it is not detrimental to the well-being of patients.
'The armed forces can't go on strike and they also have no trade union,' says McKerrell. 'But of course that's a world where you obey orders. The police force definitely has elements of that – it's very hierarchical – and there's also no history and no culture of striking.
'But perhaps the action this week will change that. It will be interesting to see if police officers feel resentful of their civilian counterparts for having a right to strike which they can't employ. Or whether there's a feeling that they're speaking out for everyone in the force who's affected by these changes.'
The Met is already heading for its lowest staffing levels in a decade by March 2025 with 310 officers per 100,000 Londoners, down from 342 in March 2023.
A spokesman for Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, said: 'The Mayor has been in contact with leaders at the Met, who have confirmed that no officers working on the frontline will be impacted by the action today. Police will be out on our streets protecting and serving Londoners as usual. The Mayor hopes the issue will be resolved soon.'
Katie admits the strike action has created a divide between striking workers and non-striking workers, and that morale is 'really low'.
But interestingly she says that the police officers walking past the picket line have been nothing but supportive. She says: 'They've said 'Well done' and 'Thank you', and 'We'd be striking too if we could'.'
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