Birmingham bin strike reaches one year mark with no end in sight

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1509kklkzvo

Posted by HBucket

11 Comments

  1. CorrosiveSpirit on

    That’s beyond embarrassing for the council. Glad I don’t live there, place probably reeks.

  2. There can’t be a years worth of rubbish on the streets?
    Is someone picking stuff up at least?

    Also, how have the binmen gone a year without wages? Is the union paying them or have they all left for other jobs? (Like private bin collections)?

  3. At this point I think the residents need to start their own protests at the picket line insisting both sides sort it out.

    Telling the council AND the strikers to solve their differences.

  4. Safety hazard in flats cardboard is stacked up to the ceiling and over flowing not what we pay council taxes for!

  5. Jaded-Researcher3025 on

    Labours incompetence on the local level is doing great for reform come the next local elections

  6. at what point do you just cut your losses and hire a full new set of staff to replace the people on strike?

  7. I’m surprised there aren’t more strikes nationwide. Council staff have had pay freezes/next to nothing awards since austerity.

    Outside the headline pay awards (train drivers, teachers, doctors) the majority are as shafted as everyone else. Just look at salaries on new job listings, most are rubbish.

  8. bars_and_plates on

    Can anyone explain to me how this sort of thing even works?

    If I personally employed someone to take out my bins, and they stopped doing it, I would stop paying them.

    What’s the deal? I assume that the entire staff here aren’t independently wealthy, so is there some sort of law that means the council has to pay them for not doing their job?

    Doesn’t it defeat the point of a strike if there’s no downside and you’re being paid anyway? What is the incentive to not just continually strike forever? How does this benefit anyone?

    Are they all just doing other jobs and retaining ther titles in name only?

    Do I live in a hole? It all sounds mad.

  9. knightsbridge- on

    I live in Brum.

    Bins have bene collected just fine for the last nine or ten months. The photos in that article are quite old – it only looked like that for the first month or so while contractors were being brought in.

    The only thing that isn’t being collected is recycling, but people are just putting it in the normal waste and nobody’s getting fined.

    Honestly, I’m not sure how much it’s costing the council, but everything’s fine here.