As we’ve reported this week, some Unite union members at the FCA have staged a two day walkout, believe to be the first strike action in the regulator’s history.

There have been a number of derisory comments on social media about this and attempts to brush off the action. This would be a mistake.

The comments, many from advisers, have been along the lines of ‘how do you go on strike when you are working from home?’, ‘will anyone notice the difference’ and so on. 

Some have also commented on the lack of numbers on the picket lines although the union has suggested that some members may be unwilling to be seen publicly (not sure why but white collar strikes can be funny things...).

The FCA has estimated that only 8% of 4,000 total staff are in the Unite union and therefore strike support is likely to be limited. Certainly it seems unlikely that a strike will bring the FCA to its knees. It does, however, suggest that all is not well at the FCA.

I am not going to deal with the relative merits of the strike or even my views on the rights or wrongs of each side. These are matters for the staff and the watchdog. Suffice to say the Unite members want a better package, particularly for lower paid members, and union recognition. The FCA says its packages are already among the best of any UK regulator and it has offered significantly better packages recently.

One of the key issues seems to be the removal of bonuses. FCA CEO Nikhil Rathi has driven through, and is still driving through, a rapid and necessary shake up of the regulator with many new senior and mid-level hires, a lot of restructuring and a shift towards becoming a digitally-focused regulator.

All of this is welcome and many will applaud him for grasping a difficult nettle and responding to widespread criticism that the FCA has been asleep on the job in the past, particular in relation to debacles like the London & Capital Finance mini-bond scandal which cost the government over £100m in compensation and the British Steel Pension Scheme mess, which may cost a similar amount.

Much of the criticism about the regulator's response, apart from not being quick enough off the mark, was centred on the FCA handing out bonuses to staff at the same time as it was guilty of regulatory failure after regulatory failure. Nikhil Rathi is responding to this by more or less getting rid of bonuses and shaking the tree. 

The strike may imply that the FCA is paying poverty wages to staff slaving away in some kind of over-heated regulatory factory. It is not. For a government quango the FCA pays very well and many senior staff are on packages way above the Prime Minister or even the package earned by the majority of Financial Planners.

There is an issue with lower paid staff who will be finding the cost of living challenges particularly hard. The FCA has taken on large numbers of staff to try to tackle its regulatory gaps and many are at the lower pay scales. This needs to be sorted and preferably amicably.

There is also no logical reason why the Unite union cannot be recognised as representing its members, if that’s what they want. 

The FCA has made much progress in the past 12 months and its needs to move on from a confrontation with staff. It has bigger fish to fry. 

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience in finance, business and mainstream news. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days. Follow @FPT_Kevin