Matt Reid, Unite convenor for Birmingham bins speaking at the Socialism 2025 saturday rally
In Birmingham, the bin workers face an £8,000 pay cut, that’s 20% of their annual wage. A loss like that will have drastic effects on their lives, from mortgage and rent payments to just buying food and clothes for their families, in the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
This has been unbearable financial, emotional pressure to striking workers and their families.
And it is all due to a Labour council that, instead of standing firmly with working people, has decided to use union-busting tactics and legislation like Section 14 public order injunctions to worsen our pay, terms and conditions, using fire and rehire. They are trying to make industrial action and protest as ineffective as possible.
All while being supported by a Labour government which has, at every opportunity, told striking workers to end the strike and just accept the pay cuts. That is not why the Labour Party was created. It was actually created to stop employers from getting away with that kind of treatment of workers.
When the Labour government came to power, we were excited because [the Tories] had sent commissioners into Birmingham. So we thought: ‘A Labour government, thank God, things will change’.
When the Labour government came to power, they promised change. They promised an Employment Rights Act that would be game-changing for working people. But the reality is far from that. The proposed amendments would still allow fire and rehire in the public sector, and local authorities like Birmingham would be able to tear up contracts and fire and rehire care workers, teaching assistants, refuse collectors and many other job roles. All they would have to do is show financial difficulty which, after years of austerity, is not a difficult ask.
Despite all of this disgraceful behaviour from a Labour council and government, we’re still standing strong, eleven months into our industrial action.
We have the full support of our union and Sharon Graham, our general secretary, and we have the full support of our regional secretary. We’ve also received messages of solidarity from all around the country and so many generous donations to our strike fund.
Our movement has really shown us that we are not alone. We have the backing of organisers, activists, sister trade unions and all working people who understand the massive sacrifices that striking bin workers in Birmingham are making, to make a positive change for their own situation and by extension other public sector workers as well.
We know that Birmingham is just a blueprint. Every other council will be facing the same sort of situation. They’ll see how it works in Birmingham and they’ll push forward: ‘We’re struggling financially. We need to fire and rehire this workforce.’
We’re now at a historic moment, where we are balloting our agency staff for the first time. This is the agency staff who were brought in to replace us in December.
I used to call them ‘scabs’, but now I’ve changed my tune quite drastically! They’re showing amazing strength and they’ve been treated so badly, on zero-hour contracts. If they’re late, they’re sacked. If they don’t complete their rounds, they’re sacked.
The ballot result is due Monday, but a lot of them have come out already, over 40 so far.
If Labour no longer stands with working people, we can no longer put our heads in the sand and ignore it. It’s time to rebuild. We built a party based on workers’ rights, equality, fairness and true solidarity before. There is no reason we can’t do it again. A truly democratic, socialist party that is based around making material change and bettering people’s lives in this country. For the people, by the people, that focuses on what unites us, not what divides us. And together we can hold the right wing back and make a fair, inclusive society that we can all be proud of, with unions and normal working people at the core. Because when we’re all together, we can be absolutely unstoppable.
