ABOUT 2,500 civil servants in the Department of Social and Family Affairs are to escalate a campaign of industrial action from today in a row over flexi-time working arrangements.
The Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU), which represents lower paid civil servants, is to introduce an overtime ban following a breakdown in talks at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) last week. Staff will also refuse to answer telephone calls to offices around the country.
The department said yesterday that it expected that existing industrial action which involved the withdrawal of lunchtime services to the public at local offices would continue and that the possibility of other, unspecified, action had been flagged.
The dispute centres on the hours of operation for the current flexible working time arrangement in the Department of Social Affairs, which the union has argued is more restrictive than in other parts of the civil service.
The CPSU said that a civil service general council agreement in 2001 provided for flexi-time arrangements running from 8.00am to 7.00pm. It said that the current working span in the Department of Social Affairs was 8.30am to 6.30pm.
The department said the original general council report provided that flexibility could not be unconditional and could not be allowed to reduce the overall efficiency of departments or their service to the public. It said it already operated a wide range of family-friendly attendance arrangements for staff.
The union said yesterday that despite a recent intervention by the National Implementation Body and discussions at the LRC, the department had refused to give a commitment that it would roll out the extended flexi-bands to all social welfare offices and the general council agreement would have to be introduced in the same way as the rest of the civil service.
CPSU assistant general secretary Derek Mullen said: "This is not a difficult issue, yet the department made it so by their intransigence. There are much more serious issues to be addressed, such as the changing position with the live register and the growing crisis typified by backlogs and delays in claim processing across the country."
In responding to the claim, the department has stated that extension of the flexi-bands would be considered in the context of a general review of attendance arrangements. Such a review would facilitate consideration of the necessary balance between customer service requirements and flexible working arrangements, it said.
The department said it had proposed a pilot programme in areas where a new time and attendance system was in place. As part of this process it had suggested that local offices should be opened for an additional hour, later reduced to half an hour. It said that it had further proposed "to modify the old flexi-system to accommodate the extended flexi-bands".
