The union claims it has demanded a written guarantee that bin workers would not face financial losses as a result of current and possible future reviews of job roles
Talks between Birmingham City Council and Unite to end the city’s devastating bin strike have ended today, apparently in acrimony. Today’s negotiations shut down with the union claiming the council was ‘failing to come clean’ about the true fate of its bin workers, a claim the council denied.
The union claims it has demanded a written guarantee that bin workers would not face financial losses as a result of current and possible future reviews of job roles – but none was forthcoming. They say that is at odds with public statements by council leader John Cotton, who has said none of the workers currently in disputed Waste Recycling and Collection Officer roles needed to ‘lose out’, a position he has maintained through the negotiations and reiterated in media interviews today.
The outcome means it will be after Easter before there is any hope of an end to the bitter dispute that is pitting around 400 bin workers against the biggest council in Europe, backed up by the Labour Government.
In a statement, Unite said the talks that were being held today were halted because negotiators from the council refused to put in writing that none of its bin workers would lose pay ‘in the long term’.
Most of the 170 affected workers have accepted alternative work offers or taken voluntary redundancy. The rest have been served with compulsory redundancy notices.
But Unite say that when the council’s representatives were asked to ‘put in writing’ a guarantee of no financial losses, they did not do so. “We believe they are telling untruths to the public to infer the offer given is better than it really is,” said a Unite spokesperson.
“They need to come clean. Cotton said only today that ‘nobody needs to lose income’. So today Unite asked council negotiators to put in writing what they have said in public so members could consider it an official offer.”
The four demands set out by Unite were: Confirmation that no bin worker at risk of redundancy would lose pay, confirmation that affected workers who were moved ‘sideways’ into equivalent roles in the street cleaning services would have their pay protected long term and confirmation that affected workers who did not wish to move ‘sideways’ would receive a lump sum of £16,000 to cover the likely impact of a downgrade.
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said she stood ready to meet Cotton and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner over Easter.
But she said the council leader should “rethink his position” if his comments “prove to be untrue”. She said: “We appear to be in a parallel universe. Yet again, John Cotton is saying one thing in public, while his local officers are saying another in the negotiating room and in writing.”
Meanwhile, the city council’s leader has said as he urged the Unite union to help bring the industrial action to an end ahead of a fresh round of talks on Wednesday. John Cotton has asked Unite to “come back to the table” and bring an end to the all-out bin worker strike that has caused misery for residents since it started on March 11.
Onay Kasab, the union’s national lead officer, added: “If other local authorities look to cut the pay of essential public service workers, then there is the potential for strike action spreading. That’s why different political choices need to be made.”
The dispute in Birmingham, where the council declared itself effectively bankrupt in 2023, has been triggered by the council’s decision to cut a role from its bin lorry fleets, which it claims it needs to do to save money and prevent any future equal pay liability.
There have been similar disputes in response to council cutbacks in other parts of the country.
In Peterborough, the GMB union has been in dispute with the council over pay for workers in recycling and waste collection, street cleaning and parks maintenance, claiming they would be paid “just pennies over the national living wage”.
A union spokesperson said members were “considering a revised pay offer” but that strikes were “on the table” in the dispute.
In March, hundreds of workers at Aberdeen city council voted to back strike action to oppose a fire-and-rehire policy, as part of a dispute over a pay freeze and the implementation of a shorter working week.
GMB said 88% of its members in non-education roles and 71% of janitorial staff in the city’s schools backed the move.
