Birmingham Socialist Party members
Unite members working as bin loaders and drivers for Birmingham City Council took their first of twelve days strike action on Monday 6 January. This was provoked by the council’s attempts to remove the safety critical Grade 3 role from bin crews.
The workers affected stand to lose £8,000 a year as a result of the downgrading. It will also make the bin collections less safe and reliable for staff and the public.
Despite the blizzard conditions, morale on the three picket lines was high, with workers saying: “If it takes days, weeks or months, we’ll do what it takes to beat the council”.
These attacks on bin workers aren’t happening in isolation. Youth services, libraries and day centres are already in the process of being closed, and the council is set to announce a further £195 million cuts next month.
The justification for this is the council declaring ‘bankruptcy’ in September 2023, allegedly due to equal pay claims by workers in women-dominated roles. But a settlement to pay these workers what they’re rightly owed was agreed on the eve of the bin strike – and it’s rumoured to come in at a fraction of the original £750 million cost!
It has also come out that for six years the council was overpaying contributions to the West Midlands Pension Fund, totalling £500 million. This didn’t get paid to retired council workers – it just sat there helping make wealthy shareholders and speculators richer! This money should be demanded back to be spent on the services our city needs.
Bin workers and other frontline council staff didn’t cause the financial crisis, but are being made to pay for it. Not just by a Labour council, but now also by a Labour government stood behind them.
One thing many of the bin workers agreed on was that at the next council election in 2026, there can be no support from Unite for the Labour candidates responsible for these attacks.
