After three months of the Birmingham Bin Strike, the Labour Council have no plan to end their strike and has so far failed to show leadership and get our City clean. The press has even reported that cabinet members have run away from the press to avoid answering questions about their failure.
That is why the opposition Birmingham Local Conservatives have, this week, published their plan for ending the strike.
It is clear that if the Labour-run Council is unable to get things moving with their plan of action then they should try this. Brummies deserve cleaner streets free from rats!
Opposition release plan to help end the bin strike after Council fails to get a grip of rats and rubbish crisis
After three months of failure by the City Council administration to end Labour’s bin strike, Birmingham Local Conservatives are backing residents with a 6-point plan to end the bin strikes and clean our streets. With no end in sight, the Conservative Group are calling on the Labour Administration to put residents first, adopt the opposition’s plan to end the strike and resolve the issues that have plagued the city once and for all.
Birmingham Local Conservatives plan to end the bin strike:
- Ensure the safety of staff who choose to work, enabling them to access and exit depots, including with vehicles, without facing intimidation. The City Council has an unequivocal duty of care to its employees, and this obligation must not be compromised. Take action against anyone found to have attacked staff trying to do their job.
- Expedite all necessary actions to eliminate the council’s equal pay liability without further delay, including permanently ceasing any roles risking continued liability. Deliver on the Council’s prior commitment to resolve all liabilities by 31 March 2025, therefore any required formal notices to amend roles or terms and conditions should be issued promptly, in full compliance with legal consultation requirements. Under no circumstances should the Council settle the bin dispute in a way that creates further equal pay risks.
- Attach a clear and reasonable deadline to any offer presented to the unions. If the offer is lawful and avoids creating new equal pay liabilities, it should be reissued with a specified expiration date. If the unions do not accept by this date, the offer should be withdrawn, to prevent taxpayers from being held to ransom.
- Urgently complete the previously committed review of the service’s future operating model. As promised by the Administration, this review must assess all options, including externalisation, to determine the model delivering the best value for residents based on a comprehensive evaluation.
- Explore the redeployment of council employees on flexible contracts to support city clean-up efforts during the dispute. Where staff in non-safety-critical roles can assist, they should be utilised to the fullest extent permitted by law and their contractual terms.
- Implement in full the Local Conservatives’ fully costed ‘Plan for a Cleaner City’; including maintaining weekly collections, scrapping the ‘Rat Tax’ and increasing street cleaning, as proposed at the March budget meeting. We urge Labour to reconsider their earlier opposition and adopt this plan to address the city’s immediate and future needs.
Cllr Robert Alden (Con, Erdington) Leader of the Opposition and Birmingham Local Conservatives, on Birmingham City Council said:
With the ruling administration hiding from the press, even reported to have run away from local journalists trying to get answers, it is clear they have no intention of leading on this matter, so we will do it for them. As the opposition we want residents to have a clean city, so are putting forward a plan to resolve the strikes and get Birmingham clean again. All the Labour administration need to do now is adopt our plan in full and get the rats and rubbish off our streets.
Cllr Ewan Mackey (Con, Sutton Roughley) Deputy Leader of the Opposition commented:
Labour’s dysfunctional relationship with their Union friends has brought chaos to the city’s streets yet again. With the current strike itself a fallout of decisions made during the 2017 and 2019 strikes, residents are rightly saying enough is enough. We are clear that the issues that have contributed to Labour’s equal pay crisis cannot be allowed to persist, but nor can our bins go uncollected week after week. It is time for Labour to step up, start putting residents first, and sort this out once and for all. That is what our plan does, putting residents first and cleaning up our city.
Cllr Timothy Huxtable (Con, Hall Green South) Shadow Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport said:
The scenes we have witnessed around waste depots in recent weeks are completely unacceptable, the Council has a clear duty of care to all of its staff, and especially to those who are choosing to work through this difficult period. There should be zero tolerance for any intimidation. We also need to be clear that the council will not simply wait for the Union to change their minds, if the offer is not accepted it should be withdrawn, and a clear message sent that the Council will no longer allow equal pay risks to continue. Meanwhile, Labour need to get on with completing previously promised reviews, and adopting our costed plan to clean the streets. At present Labour are presiding over a public health emergency, there is no more time for delay, leadership is needed now.
