City & Guilds staff to vote on strike action over return-to-office plans

Hundreds of staff at awarding giant City & Guilds are set to vote on strike action over plans to require employees to work from the office at least two days a week.

Unite the Union claimed the “vindictive” policy is being used by the company’s new owner PeopleCert to force workers out of the business.

City & Guilds bosses rejected the allegation and accused the union of “misrepresenting the situation”, while describing the policy as a “reasonable and carefully considered” move designed to improve collaboration, performance and service delivery.

It comes months after 75 City & Guilds roles were put at risk of redundancy, prompting threats of legal and industrial action from the union. Sixty-four redundancies were ultimately made.

Unite claimed “all” staff have been instructed to work from the office for a minimum of two days a week, and more if required, despite “many” having remote-working contracts and working from home since “well before” the Covid pandemic.

It said interim CEO Andy Moss had previously encouraged flexible location contracts as a strategy to overcome recruitment difficulties.

Unite added that City & Guilds was refusing to cover travel and overnight accommodation costs for staff who live long distances from their designated offices, in some cases hundreds of miles away.

Parents are also facing “significant difficulties” arranging and paying for day and overnight childcare, the union added.

But City & Guilds said the policy applies only to the 990 employees whose contractual place of work is an office. Around 150 staff contracted to work from home are not affected, it said, while reasonable adjustments, flexible-working requests and individual circumstances will “continue to be considered fairly and appropriately”.

In response, Unite said City & Guilds has failed to commit that they will not impose future changes to the number of days workers need to work from the office without negotiation. A spokesperson added: “This means that all workers are at risk of having their number of office days changed without any warning.”

Around 800 City & Guilds workers are Unite members.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “This is a blatant and unfair attack on the workforce to try and make redundancies on the cheap.

“City & Guilds workers can see straight through PeopleCert’s attempts to cull its workforce with this totally unjustifiable and vindictive policy. Unite will not stand for it – these workers have their union’s total backing.”

A spokesperson for City & Guilds said: “We’re disappointed that Unite has chosen to misrepresent the situation and ballot members on what is a reasonable and carefully considered policy that is in the best interests of learners and customers, as well as being equitable for all our colleagues.

“Many colleagues already attend their workplace regularly, and we believe greater consistency across the organisation is reasonable and fair.”

They added that the company has engaged “constructively and extensively” with Unite on these arrangements, holding eight meetings before and since the policy was announced, as well as extending the timeframe for those discussions to allow “proper debate”.

The return-to-work implementation date was originally set for 28 September but was extended to 19 October.

Office working to improve C&G ‘competitiveness’

PeopleCert bought City & Guilds’ awarding and commercial business from the 148-year-old charity last October for around £166 million.

The controversial sale has been the subject of three separate investigations involving the Charity Commission, PeopleCert itself and the City & Guilds Foundation.

In May, PeopleCert put 6 per cent of City & Guilds’ then 1,250-strong workforce up for redundancy. Unite threatened but did not pursue legal and industrial action, after accusing the company of advertising jobs in Greece during the negotiations, and failing to involve staff early enough in the redundancy process.

The dispute also followed a leaked PeopleCert business plan which proposed cutting around a third of City & Guilds’ workforce through “natural employee churn”. The plan included moving some roles to Greece, where personnel costs were said to be “up to 50 per cent lower”.

Unite accused PeopleCert of unlawfully withholding key information during staff transfer consultations.

The union said a consultative ballot of around half of Unite members at City & Guilds found 97 per cent in favour of industrial action over the return-to-office “diktat”.

Unite national officer Peter Storey said: “Thanks to the collective strength of the workforce, Unite forced PeopleCert to backdown from its previous dishonest plans. But we warned at the time that Unite would remain vigilant and we have been proved right.

“There has been no serious meaningful consultation or negotiation from PeopleCert about fundamental changes to people’s working arrangements and work from home policies. PeopleCert needs to backdown because its current plans will blow up in its face.”

A spokesperson from PeopleCert said Unite’s comments “mischaracterise both PeopleCert and our ambition for City & Guilds”.

They added: “We are a UK-headquartered global business serving thousands of organisations, government agencies and partners across more than 200 countries, with the UK being our core market.

“The policy is designed to improve City & Guild’s competitiveness and performance in a highly contested market and form part of a wider transformation programme to unlock its potential and build a world-leading organisation that is fit for the future.”