HM Revenue and Customs is launching an annualised hours pilot for its Customer Services Group – the team that handles thousands of queries from taxpayers.
According to the Public and Commercial Services Union, employees will be asked to volunteer for the pilot, which would mean giving up flexible working, in return for a small allowance.
Pilot participants would receive £4.67 per week before tax, according to PCS, which described the allowance as “frankly embarrassing”.
The union is talking to managers about how the proposals would affect peak times, and the fact other departments that operate annualised hours offer “a much more generous reward mechanism”.
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Under the pilot, workers would work fixed hours during six months of the year, including June and December. For the rest of the year, they would work shorter fixed hours.
Some of the annualised total would be kept in reserve by HMRC so staff can be called into work if there are unexpected peaks, PCS said.
The new arrangements would also affect how employees take annual leave – if someone took holiday during the busier months of the year, that would reflect the longer hours they would have worked and so they would use more of their leave.
According to PCS, HMRC has said that if they cannot attract enough employees to do the pilot, they would need to recruit new staff from outside the department.
The union has proposed that the department instead uses “part-year appointments”, which are used in some other government departments that experience peaks and troughs of demand, such as the Passport Office.
“This model would be nothing new for the department,” it claimed. “HMRC already has direct experience with contracting workers to operate solely during specific months of the year, with those members of staff who work ‘term time’ working arrangements.”
PCS is urging its members not to give up their flexible working rights in return for “less than £4 a week after tax”, saying it “makes absolutely no sense whatsoever”.
HMRC is also rolling out a scheme whereby staff can “sell” some of their annual leave back to the department, after a trial earlier this year.
Under the scheme, staff will be able to sell leave between 11 and 31 October, and will receive payment for this in their November wages. There is no option to buy additional leave, however.
PCS called the roll-out “cynical, given the current cost-of-living crisis”. It said some members will feel they have no choice other than to sell leave, adding to existing stress and pressures on employees in the department.
A spokesperson from HMRC said: “We continue to work with Trade Unions on any changes to how we work, including pilots and trials, and will share information with our colleagues at the earliest opportunity.”
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