The Socialist 26 July 2017

Barts health strike: Low pay, no way!

Right wing attempts to use single market against Corbyn

Barts health strike: Low pay, no way!

Birmingham bin workers stand firm

Bron Afon workers strike against £3,000 pay cut

Court victory for PCS and all trade unions

Tesco's 10% pay increase accompanied by cuts and job losses

Mears workers escalate action to all-out strike

Workers' campaign underway to stop ward closure

Workplace news in brief

Building workers' struggle and the forces of international socialism

Abolish tuition fees and student debt!

Education cuts: Tories buckling under public pressure

BBC yawning pay gaps revealed

Homelessness and evictions soar under the Tories

Them & Us

Russia 1917: how art helped make the revolution

Young people...fight for a future, fight for socialist policies

Grenfell survivors tell Tories: "Step down and resign"

Vigil for Grenfell

Tenants' meeting reveals huge anger

Corbyn visits Southampton on marginal seat tour

Huddersfield A&E closure referred to Jeremy Hunt

From Militant to the Socialist Party - what you thought

Socialist sales at Salford station

Street cleaners support the Birmingham bin strike

'Freedom riders' lobby against violent policing

Council meeting abandoned after undercover policing protest

Education cuts forced back in Hackney

Southampton councillors faced with angry anti-cuts campaigners

Plans to bring A-levels back to Knowsley abandoned

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Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/957/25875

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Street cleaners support the Birmingham bin strike

Birmingham bin workers on strike, photo Ian Leech (Click to enlarge)

As part of our Saturday stall campaigning on 22 July, Socialist Party members in Birmingham gave out leaflets to raise support for striking Birmingham refuse workers. Not many people know that the strike is not only about pay cuts but also about jobs and safety.

The city's Blairite Labour council wants to get rid of the second loaders who take responsibility for safety at the back and side of the wagon (not non-working 'supervisors' as implied by the local paper). Instead drivers will be responsible for the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers even if they can't see them!

While campaigning, I met a street cleaner who told me that although he'd been tidying up Birmingham for 13 years, he was still on an agency contract with no holiday, sick pay and other basic rights. Agency workers on street cleaning and the bins are also bullied by management to work unsafely.

I suggested that he and his agency workmates join a union. Already, some agency bin workers in Unite have joined the bin strike. Now Unite is balloting street cleaners too, and I hope the guy I met and his co-workers also join the action.