THE END of Birmingham’s long-running bin strike may be in sight – leaving the question: why on earth did the Labour Council take so long to settle the dispute?
The problems began in September 2023 when Birmingham City Council effectively went bankrupt. It had been under-paying many women workers for years. When the workers won an equal pay dispute, the Council was left with a bill – in back pay and legal costs – so large it went to the wall.
To help solve the financial problems caused by equal pay, the Council did a restructure which left workers in waste services (mostly male) being threatened with a pay cut. They refused to take it – leading to various episodes of strike action, which turned into an all-out, indefinite strike in March 2025. Residents were left with rubbish piling up on the streets – which smelled dreadful and attracted rats.
In May 2025, the Courts ordered strikers to let waste collection trucks, driven by fellow workers who were not on strike, enter and leave Council depots – undermining the striking workers’ picket lines. The Council tried to buy off some of the strikers with redundancy offers – and was successful in some cases. It then announced that its new refuse service would save money by only collecting bins once a fortnight.
Last month, March 2026, it seemed there was still no end to the dispute in sight. The Council was running a patchy service, but the striking workers were still out. Council Leader John Cotton apologised for the impasse, saying he could not see how there could be a breakthrough. The striking workers were members of the Unite trade union – previously one of Labour’s largest funders, it announced in March that it was cutting its funding to the national party. Miraculously, the breakthrough appeared. The City Council and the unions agreed a deal which will be put to workers and the new Council after the elections. If all goes well, striking workers will receive compensation for their loss of earnings and will go back to work.
Other parties which are standing Council candidates in the May elections are accusing Labour’s eleventh hour deal of being a stunt, aimed more are keeping control of the Council than at solving the dispute fairly. Unite has claimed that Commissioners, sent in when the Council became “bankrupt” to help it sort out its finances, had held up settlement. On 8th May, we’ll know whether Labour’s last minute offer has come too late for the voters to forgive them for a year of rubbish chaos.
●One of the grandees sent to Birmingham by the Government was former Labour Executive Mayor John Biggs, who was defeated in the 2022 Council elections in Tower Hamlets. He had also presided over an industrial dispute in Tower Hamlets. Called “Tower Rewards”, the Council’s programme tried to cut terms and conditions of the Council workforce. When the workforce did not accept the offer, the Council tried to fire them and re-hire them on the new conditions – a practice condemned by trade union leaders and the national Labour Party.
●Read more about it: Is that a bit of egg on your chin, Mr Biggs? Biggs takes “I’m bigger than Dave Prentis” line