Rats on Birmingham streets…
Six months into Birmingham’s bin strike, rats scurry through metres-high piles of uncollected refuse. Picketed depots mean that in excess of 17,000 tonnes of rotting waste lines streets, rendering walkways impassable. At one point, the rubbish was piled so high, with black bags ripped open by rats, foxes and seagulls, that a major incident was declared, allowing Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner to draft in logistical support from military planners in an attempt to compensate for reduced collection – although it was notable that the first areas to be cleared were the leafy, well-heeled suburbs of areas such as Edgbaston, with working class streets left mired in festering rubbish. On 23 May, Birmingham City Council (BCC) obtained an injunction in an attempt to prevent workers from picketing waste depots to prevent trucks from leaving. But Birmingham’s refuse workers are refusing to back down over planned changes by Birmingham City Council that would see many of them lose up to £8,000 a year.
Rats behind closed doors…
The strike, led by Unite the Union, is the result of a pay dispute between refuse workers and Birmingham City Council. Some 150 workers face a reduction from grade three pay to two, as the council threatens to delete the ‘waste recycling and collection officer’ (WRCO) role. Workers’ righteous indignation at the prospect of a nominal pay cut of up to £8,000 gave Unite little choice but to call a strike on 11 March, following weeks of smaller-scale industrial action. The council argues that the WRCO is superfluous, pointing out that the role exists nowhere else. To understand the workers’ present position, one must understand the outcome of the previous Unite-led bin strike.
In 2017, BCC proposed the scrapping of ‘Leading Hands’ – workers who coordinate with dustcart drivers from the vehicle’s rear, ensuring the safety of both workers and residents. At the time, Leading Hands made up 20% of the total refuse collection workforce. BCC sought to relegate Leading Hands from grade three to grade two pay. In precisely the same way as the present, this pay cut was to be done indirectly, by deleting the role, forcing workers to apply for grade two positions.
The 2017 strike’s goal was to secure the retention of the Leading Hand position. However, having been forced to call the strike, Unite continuously undermined the action against the Labour-run BCC. The union, which is the Labour Party’s largest donor, asked that workers not picket Labour councillors. Then, in November 2017, having already sent strikers back to work, Unite struck a deal with BCC. The settlement saw the Leading Hand role scrapped in favour of a newly created grade three position: ‘waste recycling and collection officer’ (WRCO). However, the WRCO posts were secured only up to February 2019. The consequences of this concession to the Labour council are now being felt with a vengeance.
At the time, Unite the Union’s assistant general secretary Howard Beckett hailed the deal as not only securing grade three pay but as a ‘victory for the people of Birmingham who no longer need worry about the disruption of industrial action’. As we predicted at the time (‘Birmingham bin workers sold out by Labour’ on our website), neither of these would be the case.
In 2024 (by which time Beckett had been dismissed following alleged financial misconduct), the Labour-run council again threatened wage cuts. The failings of Unite’s 2017 deal were laid bare when the WRCO position itself now faced closure, with WRCOs offered a choice between an £8,000 pay cut to grade two or redundancy. An additional 200 dustcart drivers are threatened with demotion from grade four to three, also entailing a wage cut of £8,000 a year.
Rotten council
Birmingham City Council is now spending thousands of pounds a week – illegally – on inexperienced agency workers given less than an hour’s training to fulfil roles crucial to health and safety, while it conspires with central government to enforce austerity. After BCC issued a section 114 notice – effectively a declaration of bankruptcy – in September 2023, the then Conservative Secretary of State for Communities, Michael Gove, appointed a team of commissioners to ‘solve the city’s financial woes’. Headed by Max ‘the Axe’ Caller, this meant imposing ruthless cuts on public services.
Despite this mission, in December 2024, Caller and his team nonetheless found £200m to spend on a new fleet of 150 dustcarts. These vehicles are described as having increased health and safety features but in reality, such systems are no substitute for an experienced overseer. Caller is hellbent on cutting services in the name of ‘streamlining’. Amidst a 7.5% tax hike, library funding is to be slashed and collection services themselves have been cut. While the commissioners were appointed by the Conservatives, the new Labour government could, at any point, recall Caller if they were serious about challenging austerity.
Instead, the government is prepared to let ‘The Axe’ force through these changes. The bin strike may be an embarrassment, but the better-off inhabitants of Birmingham whose vote it cares about have simply hired private refuse removal services and been largely unaffected by the strike. So the council has responded to the workers’ grievances with hostility. When workers gathered outside the town hall in the hope of delivering a letter to the council, enumerating their dissatisfactions with proposed deals, they were met with locked front doors. This is despite the fact that 13 BCC councillors are members of Unite, and one, Kerry Jenkins, is a full-time employee of the union. On 24 May, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham admitted – after three weeks of keeping workers in the dark – that there had never been ‘a fair and reasonable offer’ on the table at ACAS talks. The intransigence of the council means that this time there is no compromise on offer that might allow the union once again to sell out the long-term interests of public sector workers. The bin workers remain determined and defiant on picket lines across the city, and we support their struggle.
Reuben Birch
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 306 June/July 2025
