The State’s largest public service trade union is seeking to engage with Civil Service management with a view to “preventing any further solo runs” by individual departments aiming to try to bring staff back to offices more frequently.
The Department of Social Protection last month sought to have staff attend the office for a minimum of two days a week under a change to existing blended working arrangements.
Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary has confirmed that more than 800 staff in his department had an arrangement last year allowing them to attend the office one day a week.
He said having these personnel come to the office more frequently was “considered necessary to provide sufficient opportunity for in-person interaction with colleagues in order to sustain organisation knowledge exchange, culture and provision of support to staff”.
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The Irish Times reported last month that management at the department had told staff they would from this month have to spend a minimum of two days a week in the office.
Fórsa trade union instructed members not to comply with the proposed changes and vowed to fight the move. Taoiseach Micheál Martin later said the issues would be resolved through an industrial relations process. The union and management said staff would retain their existing arrangements while the process took place.
In reply to a parliamentary question tabled by Labour TD Ged Nash, Mr Calleary said the minimum number of days for staff to attend the office last year was one day a week.
“Of the approximately 7,000 employees of the department, 12 per cent had an arrangement to attend on this basis whilst the remainder attend the office between two and five days per week,” he said.
Fórsa said on Tuesday it wanted centralised discussions with Civil Service management on blended working “to prevent further solo runs by individual departments”.
It said its main concerns were that the Department of Social Protection had attempted to bypass requirements set out in an agreed framework on blended working and ignore worker representatives, while failing to present any supporting data for its instruction to increase office days.
“There is a real risk here of losing innovative work practices, that have been proven to work, to old ways of thinking about the primacy of the office.”
Fórsa had also maintained that some staff in the Department of Finance faced changes to their remote working arrangements. However, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe told Mr Nash there had been “no change to my department’s blended working policy”.
He said remote working was available for the majority of staff two or three days a week but this could be less when required for business needs.
Mr Nash said “there must be no unilateral departmental changes on blended work until there is formal agreement with unions and the completion of the planned review mentioned in the programme for government”.
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