‘Come back to work' - Birmingham City Council’s bins boss' message to striking workers

Today marks one entire year since the strike went all-out, a move which led to huge heaps of rubbish piling up in city streets during its height.

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The past 12 months have also seen disruption to bin collections, fury over litter, fears over rats, unwanted headlines, ‘megapicket’ protests and heated scenes during council meetings.

The bins strike dispute between the council and Unite was initially sparked by the loss of the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer role, with striking workers claiming that they face a pay cut of £8,000.

But Birmingham City Council has disputed this figure and repeatedly insisted that a fair offer had been made before negotiations came to an end last summer amid equal pay ‘red lines’.

The council’s cabinet member for environment, Coun Majid Mahmood, issued a statement today and acknowledged the strike had “gone on for too long”.

“I’m sorry for the disruption this has caused, and I would hope Unite would also want to apologise,” he said. “It isn’t good enough and we want to end the dispute.

“But let us be clear, the council has made a series of offers to Unite to end the strike but they have all been rejected.”

He continued: “We are moving ahead with the implementation of the improved waste service this summer, a service that has been poor for too long.

“This will see the rollout of food waste collections from June this year on a phased basis, along with the return of improved recycling and green waste collection services.

“This will happen regardless of the situation with industrial action to give the people of Birmingham the waste service they deserve.”

Coun Mahmood added: “My message to those still taking industrial action is simple: come back to work as I want you to be part of this new and improved service.

“Our door remains open.”

The council also addressed a number of issues that have arisen over the past year, such as frustration over fly-tipping.

“Fly-tipping is not unique to Birmingham; it’s a growing national problem,” a council spokesperson said.

“Unfortunately, like other big cities, fly-tipping is an issue.

“Where there are hotspots we will aim to work in the local area to identify the root cause of the problems and to tackle the issue.

“Fly-tipping harms where we all have to live and work and is carried out by environmental criminals that have no regard for our neighbourhoods or their well-being.”

They continued: “When fly-tipping occurs, we act as quickly as possible.

“Our crews clear hundreds of fly-tipping reports each week; this is in addition to the work our neighbourhood crews undertake to clean up across the city.”

On whether rubbish was still piling up, the council said its contingency plan ensures every household gets a weekly waste collection.

“It was only when our depots were being routinely blocked that we inevitably could not stick to our contingency plan and waste went uncollected,” a council spokesperson said. “It was not the strike itself that caused this.

“Despite the ongoing industrial action, we are collecting waste every week from households, with an average of around 1,370 tonnes collected from kerbside every day and over 200 tonnes on average at our recycling centres.

“Our household recycling centres have had extended opening hours to support residents with recycling, and we have had extra deployments of the mobile waste centres.”

But anger over the strike dragging into its second year; the state of certain streets and rubbish attracting rats continues to rumble on despite such action being taken by the council.

Unite meanwhile has previously claimed that a “ball park” deal had been agreed last year after hours of discussions but added this figure could not get past the government-appointed commissioners, sent in to oversee the council’s financial recovery.

The union says it rejected a new offer, claiming it was much lower compared to the “ball park” figure, before negotiations came to an end in the summer.

Against this backdrop, it has criticised suggestions that the council’s ‘door remains open’ and called for negotiations to resume.

“Everyone that’s out on the picket lines are willing to carry on until the end, until [it’s resolved],” striking bin worker Dean Harris said this week.

“And the sooner the better actually because we want to get back to work.

“We’re sorry the city is looking like this, we do apologise, but as you can see today with all the boards that are up, people do support us still.

“We’d go back to work tomorrow if there was a reasonable and fair offer on the table but there isn’t.”

Mr Harris went on to urge the city council to get back to the negotiating table so “talks can continue again”.