As rubbish piles up, tempers fray amid Birmingham bin strike

The Guardian

21-03-2025

When a council rubbish lorry arrived on a street in south Birmingham on Wednesday morning, the situation descended into chaos.
Crowds of people arrived with wheelie bins crammed full of bin bags, and when staff became overwhelmed and the lorry filled up, frustrated residents began tipping their rubbish on to the street.
Police were called to shut the area down over safety concerns, and warned people they would be fined if they left rubbish behind.
'Tempers were frayed, people were just dumping stuff all over the ground. The bin lorry had to leave because it was getting out of hand,' said one resident. 'Then the police had to come. People are getting very frustrated.'
'I'm traumatised by the behaviours I witnessed there today – it was awful and dangerous,' posted a resident on social media.
These pop-up household waste centres have become increasingly fraught less than two weeks since Birmingham bin workers launched their all-out indefinite strike over pay and restructuring plans, after striking sporadically since January. The bin bags have quickly piled up, and the city is already at breaking point.
Birmingham Edgbaston MP Preet Gill said it was becoming a 'public health emergency' with residents reporting 'a plague of rats and cockroaches'.
Outside her flat near Sparkhill, Shabeena Khan contemplated the huge mound of bin bags that had built up. The pile was so big it had almost completely blocked a ground floor window of the block of six flats, and Khan estimated it had been seven weeks since it was last collected.
'I've called the council twice and they said somebody should be coming, but every day I'm waiting, crossing my fingers, and nobody has been. The bags are ripped so I'm very scared about rats,' she said. 'It's so disgusting. It's Ramadan and we're embarrassed to bring family and friends here. It's very stressful and depressing.'
She said she was particularly worried about the impact on her son, who has a learning disability and mental health problems, and she was trying to rally the building to chip in to pay for a private contractor to collect the bags.
'How long is this going to go on for?' she said.
Her neighbour, Maluka Skripkiuc, said the pile had completely blocked any sunlight from coming through her bedroom window, and the smell was so bad she had moved into her son's room.
'We just have to close the door and completely seal that room off, it really smells,' she said. 'It's horrible, I'm really worried.'
Over at a refuse depot in Tyseley, tensions continued to run high. On Tuesday, about 70 striking bin workers had gathered outside the gates on the picket line, growing increasingly frustrated by the amount of police officers on the scene.
The officers were guarding the gates and the bin lorries – staffed by agency workers – which continued to leave the depot, held up by the occasional 'go-slow' protest by the strikers who walked slowly in front of the lorries as they began their rounds.
'The way the council has handled this is very, very poor. We know it's frustrating for the public, we all live in Birmingham too, my bin hasn't been collected in the past two weeks,' said Steeven Biset, a striking refuse collector.
'We just want to be get out there and do the job that we love. But I feel like if we don't fight for what we believe is right, then they'll end up taking more and more to the point where we'll be working for less than minimum wage.'
The strikers said the Labour council's plans to scrap the role of grade 3 waste recycling and collection officer, the person responsible for safety at the back of a bin lorry, would put workers at risk. It would also mean some workers having to take a substantial pay cut.
'That person is pivotal on the back of the wagon. They're our health and safety. As a driver, they reverse me around corners. Nobody wants a 25-tonne truck reversing around a corner with nobody watching it,' said Stephen, a bin lorry driver. 'And this would take away our natural progression – you'll come in as a grade 2, then will stay as a grade 2 for your whole career, when everything is getting more expensive.'
Negotiations between the council – currently being overseen by government commissioners after declaring itself effectively bankrupt – and strikers were due to resume at the end of this week but relations had soured.
Unite claimed the council sacked three agency workers for talking to strikers – something which the city council has denied – and said the restructuring was part of a plan to replace directly employed staff with an 'insecure agency workforce'.
'The arrogance and vindictiveness of Birmingham's commissioner-led council towards low-paid hard-working refuse workers is astounding,' Unite boss Sharon Graham said.
The city council has been urging residents to leave rubbish out as normal and insisted enough agency-staffed lorries have been leaving each day to ensure collections are still happening.
While this has been the case for some, many parts of the city said they felt completely forgotten about. George Smith said it had been seven weeks since a waste lorry had visited Ashton Croft in Ladywood, and even longer since a recycling truck has been.
The communal waste areas were overflowing with bin bags, piles of cardboard and empty food packets.
'It's seven weeks today since we last had a collection. We've got three big piles of rubbish piling up and the bin bags have been teared – we know in the city centre there's a problem with rodents,' he said. 'Something has started burrowing in my garden, and it's not a mouse. That is what really concerns us more than anything else.'
A spokesperson for Birmingham city council said a 'fair and reasonable offer' had been made to Unite, and that the waste recycling and collection officer role did not exist in many councils.
'To the small number of workers whose wages are impacted ongoing by the changes to the service (of whom there are now only 40) we have already offered alternatives, including highly valuable LGV driver training for career progression and pay, and other roles in the council equivalent to their former roles. No worker will lose the sums Unite are claiming,' they said.