Rats, Rubbish, and Revolt: 20 Days Inside Birmingham’s Bin Strike
1 April 2025, 15:42 | Updated: 1 April 2025, 16:33
As Brummies face a whopping council tax hike of 7.5%, thousands are left wondering where the money goes as stinking piles of rubbish clutter Birmingham’s streets during the ongoing strike action.
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If you walk down residential streets slightly further out of the city centre, it becomes clear there is a real public health risk. Sanitary waste pours out of rat-ravaged bin bags waiting to be taken away. I found this on a street yards away from a nursery.
Four weeks on from the start of the industrial dispute, it’s clear to see the impact on working people. Slots at the tip are fully booked up at weekends and the pop-up tips running are mostly on weekdays. What choice do they have left? The answer – they’re taking time off work to wheel their bins streets away just to be emptied.
A conversation I had with Susan, a lady in her 50s at one of the mobile waste collection sites, has really stuck with me. Fighting back tears as she explained she had so far managed to bring two bins down to the site, and had two more to empty. She’d hurt herself dragging four week’s worth of rubbish to the bin lorry. She’s not alone either, in the next ten minutes I met people with sight problems and arthritis in the same boat.
Yet, it seems like this dispute is nowhere near being resolved, rather it’s being escalated. Last Thursday (27 March), Birmingham City Council told striking workers to accept the offer on the table or face being sacked after talks with Unite collapsed. Staff on strike called it a disgrace, and one of them found out they could lose their job from listening to LBC.
We’ve tried a number of times to speak to the leader of Birmingham City Council, John Cotton since the strike action began. LBC hasn’t received a reply to any of these requests.
My biggest concern after spending weeks looking at the growing collection of rubbish on our pavements is the very credible prospect of a public health incident. Does someone need to become seriously ill before a proper cleanup begins?
Rather than declaring major incidents, it seems clear to me the easiest way to end this misery is to get round the table and have productive conversations. No threats, no ultimatums. Just the outcome the people of Birmingham deserve, and are paying for.
Birmingham City Council told LBC they had no choice but to declare a major incident because of 17,000 tonnes of uncollected waste across the city.
Meanwhile, Unite The Union say pay for refuse workers, most earning little more than the minimum wage, would be impacted with pay cuts of up to £8,000
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George Icke is a reporter for LBC & LBC News.
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The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.
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