Labour is waging class war against the indefinite bin strike (Picture: Guy Smallman)
In a mammoth assault on the Birmingham bin strike, the Labour-run council is now threatening mass sackings.
This demands an urgent response from the Unite union—and the wider labour movement.
Labour council leaders announced on Wednesday that 130 workers are in the firing line after claiming they’d reached the “absolute limit” in negotiations.
Unite members are on indefinite strike against a pay cut of up to £8,000 a year. They have stood firm in the face of strike-breaking—including council bosses using police to break up picket lines.
The council’s response is now a savage threat of mass redundancies. Bosses say they will begin a “collective consultation period” on 16 July, where workers will be offered voluntary redundancy or alternative roles on worse pay.
One refuse worker told Socialist Worker the threat of mass sackings shows “how unreasonable the council is being”.
“Some of us have been here for 20, 30 years. How can you turn around and say, ‘None of you are worth the money’?” he said.
“Now is the time to up the ante more than ever.”
The announcement came as Unite and Birmingham council were in talks at the Acas mediation service.
But bosses have put an end to any further discussions. Labour council leader John Cotton claimed, “Throughout this process the council has sought to be reasonable and flexible. But we have reached the absolute limit of what we can offer.
Birmingham council has tried to blame women workers who fought for pay equality for its attacks on bin workers’ pay. In 2023, women workers in Birmingham won an equal pay claim. But, instead of levelling up women’s pay, the council wants to drive down workers’ pay across the local authority.
Cotton complained, “Unite’s demands would leave us with another equal pay bill of hundreds of millions of pounds.”
The equal pay bill isn’t to blame for the financial crisis in Birmingham. Years of Tory austerity and outsourcing—and Labour refusing to stand up against it—have caused the crisis.
The council is also facing financial pressures due to problems with the implementation of its Oracle IT system. Originally budgeted at £19 million, the council has spent over £130 million on implementing it.
From the beginning of the dispute, the council has used armies of scab vehicles, the courts and even the police to undermine the strike.
Bosses won a court injunction in June to stop workers blocking scab vehicles. The Unite leadership has been relying on a wholly inadequate “legal challenge” and did not call for defiance against the injunction.
And it has argued that the key is getting Cotton into the negotiation room as he’s the key “decision maker”.
But Cotton, the Labour council and Labour government are determined to defeat the strikers.
The threat of 130 compulsory redundancies marks a serious escalation to the council’s offensive
Mass picketing—sustained by solidarity from the trade union movement—has the power to shut down refuse collections in the city.
19 homes have been destroyed and at least 19 more damaged
Another Blairite gimmick
Human rights groups say the sentences are 'torture'
