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The UK’s largest local authority has declared a major incident over a bin strike it says has resulted in 17,000 tonnes of rubbish going uncollected across Birmingham.
Birmingham city council said on Monday that the blocking of depots by Unite picket lines had prevented it from carrying out contingency collections to alleviate the impact of ongoing industrial action.
Unite union members have been on strike on and off since January over the council’s plans to redeploy 17 refuse workers as part of a restructure.
The authority says the move will not result in any workers having to lose pay, but the union maintains that its members were not properly consulted and will be out of pocket as a result of the decision.
In recent weeks, talks between the council and the union have broken down but on Monday the two sides returned to the negotiating table in an effort to break the impasse, which has led to refuse piling up across the UK’s second city.
On Monday afternoon, the council declared a major incident due to the impact of the strikes amid growing alarm at the potential public health consequences of the action.
The council said its strike contingency plans allowed for 90 bin vehicles a day to operate, out of a usual 200. However, those collections were not able to take place, it noted, because Unite pickets were blocking depot entrances.
As a result those vehicles were being deployed later and were unable to carry out as many collections as they should.
Birmingham council’s Labour leader John Cotton said the move to a major incident was “regrettable” but necessary due to the “harm and distress” being caused to communities in the city.
“I respect the right to strike and protest, however actions on the picket line must be lawful, and sadly the behaviour of some now means we are seeing a significant impact on residents and the city’s environment,” he said.
“Unless we declare a major incident and deploy the waste service’s contingency plan, then we would be unable to clear the backlog of waste on the streets or improve the frequency of collections.”
Unite did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The council said the major incident declaration would allow it to deploy 35 extra refuse vehicles and crews around the city, share information with other agencies and potentially access support from neighbouring councils.
In a statement in the House of Commons regarding Birmingham council, local government minister Jim McMahon said the strike was causing risk to the city’s most vulnerable and deprived residents.
“This government will not hesitate to give support in any way that Birmingham leaders need,” he said, but added that the government was “monitoring the situation closely”.
Nevertheless, the situation was a local one, he said, which was rightly being led by agencies on the ground.
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McMahon was speaking as he published an update on the government’s intervention at Birmingham council, which has been run by commissioners for 18 months due to a severe financial crisis that led to a declaration of bankruptcy.
That crisis was partly as a result of a £250mn equal pay settlement regarding the refuse service, triggered by a previous Unite dispute in 2017.
Commissioners would remain involved while the council was in such a “fragile” state, said McMahon, noting that rubbish was “piling up in the streets”.
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