Financial Times journalists in dispute with management over plans for office days

Journalists at the Financial Times are at loggerheads with the publication’s management over plans to order staff back to the office four days a week by the end of the year. Members of the Financial Times’ union have unanimously voted to invoke the company’s dispute procedure over the proposals, arguing that management have “not made a compelling case” for the need to move from the current three office days. Staff received an email about the proposals this month and the FT chapel of the National Union of Journalists held a “fiery meeting” to invoke the dispute procedure with Tobias Buck, the FT’s managing editor. Officers at the NUJ are understood to have been informed of the dispute this week. “The email was a bolt out of the blue,” said one journalist. “We don’t believe the case has been made at all.” The motion, shared with all FT Group NUJ members and seen by the Guardian, raises a range of concerns about the impact of a four-day mandate. These include whether the step up of a day discriminates against parents, and particularly mothers, and the detrimental impact on finances for many staff. Other issues raised include that some staff appear to have been hired on the basis of a commitment to three-day office working. Another concern is that the policy would apply only to about 500 to 600 staff in FT Editorial who work at its London headquarters at Bracken House. Of these about two-thirds are believed to be union members. …