Anger as ‘damaging’ dispute could drag on for a year

City tried to pay off

BIRMINGHAM City council chiefs offered up to £3,000 each to disgruntled bin workers to try to bring the ‘damaging’ waste dispute to a close, it emerged this week.

Acting on legal advice, the council had worked out a deal that would make ‘commercial sense’ to try to end industrial action, now in its fifth week, despite having earlier claimed that the bin workers were acting ‘unlawfully’.

The offer, detailed in a briefing to the council’s cabinet, was in response to fears that a protracted dispute could cost cash-strapped Birmingham a staggering £28 million of public money.

A lengthy strike would also damage the city’s reputation, while residents would continue to suffer missed rubbish collections, an epidemic of fly-tipping and a rise in rats.

But the rejected.

Union Unite, which represents more than 300 refuse collectors, instead announced it is to escalate its work-to-rule and no overtime industrial action to full walkouts from Tuesday, February 19.

Bin workers will strike two days a week while the council warned the latest pay row could take a year to resolve in court.

Cllr Ian Ward (Lab, Shard End), the city council leader, said a ‘very reasonable offer’ to end Unite’s litigation had been refused and warned the city faces ‘12 months of industrial action’ because the council cannot get a court date until January 2020.

city’s

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“Justice delayed he added.

Unite assistant general secretary Howard Beckett said: “The decision to escalate the dispute and begin strike action is a direct result of Birmingham council’s failure to treat our members fairly.

“Rather than settle this dispute and end the discrimination the council has instead chosen to try to utilise

is justice denied,” anti-trade union laws and is penalising workers who have been taking industrial action by denying them their holiday requests.”

It is currently costing the council around £350,000 in mitigation measures to cope with the current workto-rule protest by Unite since December 29. Cabinet briefing papers also reveal that Unite is planning further legal challenges around the council’s use of agency workers during strike action, a possible judicial review challenging the council’s contingency arrangements; and threats of further employment tribunal claims over holiday arrangements.

“These challenges are not viewed as legitimate. The union has widened the challenges in order to put pressure on the council,” says the report.

The cabinet will decide which option (see panel) to pursue when it meets next week, unless its open invitation to the union to negotiate further is accepted in the meantime.

The bins dispute and its ramifications dominated this week’s full council meeting at the Council House. Conservative group leader Cllr Robert Alden said the leader and his fellow negotiators had been ‘played’ by the union team.