Public Pay Talks - see mod warning post 4293

Have also been informed of talks of enforcing more in-office days, different dept. A sibling in another dept again also heard same.

I think the majority would be against this and prefer to keep the maximum amount of wfh and forgo the increased pay. Going in more days will eat any pay increase anyway so it would be doubly bad.

the idea of the housing for all etc. that is mentioned in that article is nice but in the end most people will take pay rises over housing for all as a choice so not sure why the unions are so hellbent on pushing this.

It been shown in the private sector in scenarios where it has been tested (Dell for example) that the majority are willing to forgo pay increases and promotions etc to keep majority wfh I doubt it's any different in the public sector.

I am not saying on an individual level people would sacrifice salary for WFH I am saying people would refuse the the entire new deal and continue as is until a solution of pay increases without any agreement on increased in office presence being tied into it. I took a fairly heafty pay cut to change jobs last year and forced return to office in my previous job was one of the main reasons for moving. WFH is worth a lot more to a lot of people than a few % extra pay.

No office return stipulations should be entertained by the unions in these negotiations.

I have no doubt that there is lots of data to show that people in the private sector will forgo pay increases in order to keep WFH. I don't dispute that. A company like Dell can manage that because it’s typically negotiated on an individual or departmental level where the expectations across team members are broadly similar.

This is a Public Sector Pay Deal covering an incredibly diverse workforce, from civil servants in office roles to teachers in schools and council workers in vans all day. The reality is that WFH is completely meaningless to a huge portion of the membership.

If the unions were to reject or compromise on a general pay increase just to maintain WFH conditions for the subset of staff who are eligible for it, I would absolutely vote against it. Those of us who have to be on-site shouldn't be expected to forgo a percentage pay increase to protect a flexibility benefit we can't actually access. For that reason, I think it would have to be dealt with under Local Bargaining where the 2% allocation is structured in some way to maintain the WFH schedules for the grades that warrant it.