By Rebecca Anderson
The Tories are up in arms, demanding Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner intervenes in the Birmingham bin strike. Their aim? Convene a Cobra meeting and break the strike by drafting in private sector scab labour.
The Tories’ letter calls for a Cobra meeting to ‘ensure a co-ordinated response between national and local government’ and suggests ‘sending in private sector rubbish collectors to bust the local authority refuse service strikes.’ In a disgraceful move back in February, the Labour-led council had already deployed scabs, prompting Unite to escalate the strike to an all-out effort. Unite’s General Secretary Sharon Graham slammed this tactic as ‘disgraceful, especially by a Labour council’. The striking refuse workers have fought back by recruiting agency staff to the union, and in some cases to the picket lines.
Nearly 400 council bin workers have been on indefinite strike since 11 March to defend the jobs and pay of Waste Recycling and Collection Officers (WRCOs). The council wants to eliminate the WRCO role and demote 150 workers, stripping them of £8,000 annually. Tensions peaked in March when the council issued WRCOs an ultimatum: accept alternative roles or face redundancy. This all-out strike follows earlier actions this year, which met with council indifference.
Birmingham City Council, overseen by central government commissioners since its 2023 bankruptcy, can force through austerity measures against the wishes of local residents. Years of Tory cuts battered local government funding, hitting urban, Labour-voting areas the hardest, and yet now Labour is in power they have kept these commissioners in place and failed to step in and resolve the strike by providing additional funding to the impoverished council.
Unite’s members have termed it a ‘zombie council’ and Sharon Graham questions if these commissioners are obstructing the dispute’s resolution, asking, “Are the council’s decision-making abilities being hobbled by unelected commissioners? If that’s the case, the council needs to be honest with its workers and the public and tell them exactly what decisions it can and cannot make without the commissioners’ permission.”
Unite and the local Labour councillors should call on the national government to intervene, though of course not with more scab labour! The national government has the power to remove the commissioners and restore the council’s budget to its pre-2010 levels. With compulsory redundancies looming, Unite and other council unions must rally in solidarity. Bin workers, who have braved weeks of action alone, need the support of their colleagues across the council to triumph in this fight. Picketing has disrupted the use of scab lorries, but the council are threatening to crack down. Council unions and workers should mobilise mass support to shut down the depots and spread the strike to all departments.
