By Jeremy Dewar
Many hundreds of workers poured into Lifford Lane in south Birmingham from 6am onwards, many with banners and placards. They came to close the depot and prevent agency scab dustcarts from leaving, handing a temporary victory for the city’s bin workers, who have been on indefinite strike for two months, since 11 March.
Even as our coach from London was approaching the picket, we received social media messages that Birmingham City Council (BCC) had texted agency workers and told them not to come in. In an echo of the famous 1992 Saltley Gates picket, where Brummie engineers helped the miners win their strike, we arrived to shouts of, ‘We shut the gates!’ No scab worked today.
Mobilisation
Strike Map UK, We Demand Change and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project had called the ‘mega-picket’ as a means to boost the strike. Pickets have been served with notices under Section 14 of the Public Order Act, empowering police to move the picket away from the gate and limit its numbers, and arrest those who refuse. Wagons, driven by agency workers being paid a far larger salary than the pickets whose jobs they are stealing, had started to undermine the strike.
The call was answered by workers, many of themselves on strike, from across England and Wales. This shows the power indefinite strikes can have on the minds of fellow workers, the power to inspire others to make sacrifices in the class struggle. The picket, now held in jubilant spirits, also proved a magnet for other striking workers: Manchester mental health nurses; Gloucestershire phlebotomy workers and of course fellow bin workers from Sheffield.
The Sheffield refuse collectors, also Unite members, have been out for 10 months now, seeking union recognition from contractors Veolia. All that time GMB drivers have been instructed to cross their picket line. Sadly this is a worrying trend of union bureaucrats protecting their own bargaining rights by shutting out other unions and breaking workers’ unity. Rank and file militants must challenge and defy these tactics.
Can the strikers win?
Many of the Birmingham strikers wanted escalation. With the law being used against effective picketing, with the council paying way over the odds to agency workers to scab on the strike, with Labour bringing in military planners to coordinate the scabs, there is the danger of the strikers losing the momentum they have enjoyed till recently. Proud though they rightly are of their union which has backed them strongly to now, there is talk of needing to raise the stakes.
One striker told Workers Power that more BCC workers from other departments and unions should come out. A £3bn debt and £300m cuts over two years mean sooner or later every department will be up for the chop, so come out now, together. That’s what Thatcher did, he said, take on the lot of us, one by one, and won.
Another striking driver explained that they needed to convince other council workers to join the strike. Street cleaners were still working, though they are next in line, as are any council workers in the same band as the bin lorry drivers, now being downgraded with the loss of thousands of pounds.
The council will inevitably expand its attacks from the the cutting of the Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO), which has a health and safety role. As he said, ‘We always knew it wouldn’t end there, and drivers would be next, and now they’ve done it’. The council won’t stop with the bin workers.
A Birmingham Unison branch member told me there was a lot of misapprehension among other council workers, wishing the bin workers to win but waiting to see before committing to action. I said in Lambeth we decided to ballot the departments first under attack and build towards a rolling strike. He agreed that the bin workers deserved support even if it was a trickle at first.
But in fact we need to move quicker than that. The strike is at a crucial stage. If the mega-picket can be repeated and sustained, and which of the three depots are targeted each time is kept secret, so the council cannot prepare, then it is possible that the strikers can regain the momentum and cracks in the Labour Party start to emerge.
That takes organisation. A solidarity committee in Birmingham built from below could bring together every militant worker, rep and union branch, across the council and beyond. It could prepare the way for solidarity action through picketline support and outreach.
A strikers’ speaking tour – such as are already beginning to happen – could build support in town and cities across the region and the country for the pickets, agitating for anti-cuts strikes with the message, ‘It’s us now, but you could be next!’
After all other councils are closely watching the Brum bin strike. The strikers too need to elect a strike committee, so they can channel their demands for escalation onto Unite’s leadership and chief negotiator Onay Kasab, as well as widen support locally and nationally.
The workers obviously have a good relationship with Kas, who delivered a fiery, anti-Labour speech at the end of the picket. Unite’s strategy for strikes is often militant compared to other unions, but it has its limits, tending to follow a set pattern: back them to the hilt, keep them isolated, then when it’s time to stop, the bureaucratic side of their operation tends to come into play. Unless of course the Brum bin strikers and their supporters exert sufficient force to break that strategy and impose a better one.
Labour
Finally, the disgust with Labour, locally and nationally, was tangible and pervasive. Labour councillors awarding themselves a 5.9% pay rise, while cutting bin workers by 25% and raising council tax by 21%. Starmer and Reeves have added to Tory cuts with a pledge not to raise taxes on the rich or big business, creating austerity mark 2. Now they are sending in army officials to undermine a legal strike.
Strikes like this one pose the question to union leaders. Which side are you on? If you are on the workers’ side, then you need to withhold all funds from Labour and demand they reverse the cuts, write off council debts nationwide and restore pay levels for all public sector workers, male and female. And we should demand they back up their demands by action, mobilising their members for the People’s Assembly demo in June and balloting for strike action to stop every cut.
