MANAGEMENT IN CONFIDENCE
rostered) overtime is worked and is the subject of a specific staff regulation, a refusal to undertake it could be a breach of duty. Nevertheless, the implications of taking counter-action against someone refusing to work overtime are likely to be such, if there is a background of industrial action, that departments should not take counter-action without first consulting CSD.
Sit-ins
12. A sit-in during which no work is done is the equivalent of unauthorised absence and should be unpaid. Departments should, however, note that problems of identifying the participants may be greater than in the case of a strike.
Non cooperation
13. It may happen that a staff association calls for a withdrawal of individual cooperation to ensure that their members do not undertake any duties or responsibilities other than those falling strictly within the scope of both the grade and the particular post of the individual concerned.
14. Staff are not being called upon in these circumstances to avoid the duties and responsibilities of their grades and posts. Provided they do no more than this, honestly and conscientiously, management must accept and cope as best it can with the consequences of the loss of cooperation in the wider work of the department. (Paragraph 5 above deals with the situation that may arise where some staff are on strike but others are at work.)
15. Some staff may go beyond assocation instructions and refuse to undertake duties or responsibilities that can properly be required of them. Management must decide in the light of all relevant local circumstances what line to take. There is an obvious danger of inflaming the situation and this should be avoided if at all possible, particularly bearing in mind that the trouble initially may be very localised. Even where the Staff Side has declared a state of non cooperation, the greatest advantage is likely to lie in keeping the communication channels open. (Where, however, some proposal attractive to the Staff Side is under consideration, it may be expedient to make it clear that its progress could be impaired). But of course staff may take a more extreme line, tantamount to outright indiscipline on a major scale. Work could then be as much disrupted as if there were a strike. If this happens, staff should be told they are going far beyond any reasonable view of withdrawal of cooperation. They should be warned that if they persist it will, therefore, be necessary to consider relieving them from duty until such time as they are prepared to carry out their full duties. If the warning is not heeded, the facts should be reported to the senior officer responsible for the work, not below the rank of Principal. Unless he is satisfied that a very early resumption of an appropriate degree of normal working can be achieved by other means, he should relieve those concerned from duty, as outlined in paragraphs 6 and 7 above.
16. The question of what may properly be required of a particular grade may depend on local factors. The strict legal position is probably that a civil servant can be directed to do any job; but the custom and practice may vary from department to department. If, however, staff in large provincial offices refuse to rotate between posts where it has previously been the regular practice to do so, they would be refusing to do something within the normal range of duties of their grade. Similarly, desk training and paid substitution may well have established themselves as within the normal range of duties.
Blacking
17. The response to blacking will often depend on the general strategic background. It might well be in management's interest deliberately to run the risk of more extensive action by suspending those who black the work of others and thus to increase the cost of industrial action to participants. On the other hand, where blacking has no significant effect on immediate and essential work, departments might wish not to be provocative.
Industrial action by civil servants in times of transport and other difficulties.
18. In times when transport difficulties, or other situations making it difficult for staff to get to work, coincide with periods of industrial action in the Civil Service, all staff who do not attend MANAGEMENT IN CONFIDENCE
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