Staff at UK statistics office vote for strike action

LONDON (Reuters) - Staff at Britain's official statistics agency, which publishes economic data such as inflation and economic growth figures, have voted for strike action in a dispute over requirements for working from the office, a union said on Friday.

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) said management at the Office for National Statistics had told employees to be physically present in the workplace for at least 40% of their working time from April.

"The new policy has been imposed on staff, when previously there had been no requirement to spend a specific amount of time in offices, following the move to home and hybrid working," the union said in a statement.

The PCS said 73.5% of its members working for the ONS voted in favour of strike action and 83.8% for action short of strike, on a turnout of 50%. The union said other unions had challenged the rules and it was seeking talks to resolve the dispute.

An ONS spokesperson said the agency had "robust plans" to "mitigate against disruption and maintain essential services should any industrial action take place".

The ONS has flexible hybrid working plans which it believes are in the best interests of the agency and all staff, the spokesperson said.

The ONS has recently struggled to publish data on Britain's jobs market due to low response rates to its monthly Labour Force Survey, leaving analysts with doubts about one of the closely watched gauges of the economy.

(Writing by William Schomberg; editing by Mark Heinrich)

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