Picket lines return

SMILING bin workers manned the barricades at waste depots across Birmingham this week in the first of a series of one-day strikes. Their actions brought refuse collections across the city to a virtual halt, meaning thousands of bins filled with food waste, litter and recycling would be left.

Former city bins boss Councillor Majid Mahmood, who quit in disgust over the council’s strategy, wrote: “The irony is that the council has spent more on ‘strike busting’ in the last few months than the cost of making parity payments that would settle the dispute.”

He added: “The city council is on a destructive path in an attempt to break the trade union movement in the city. That is something that I and members of the Labour movement will not allow to happen.”

Tory councillor Debbie Clancy said the way the council has negotiated with Unite over bins had been “an embarrassment”.

She said: “Council Leader Ian Ward’s handling of this dispute has been an embarrassment to this city from the outset, costing taxpayers millions and giving rise to some very significant financial and legal risks.

“His dysfunctional relationship with his friends in the Labour movement since promising to resolve the dispute on becoming leader, back in 2017, appears only to have made matters worse.”