Nick Hart, Birmingham Socialist Party

Bin workers in Birmingham have hit back at the Labour council after weeks of legal threats and heavy-handed policing. For the last month, pickets were threatened with arrest under section 14 of the Public Order Act if they continued to stand or walk in the path of lorries leaving the depots.

However, a High Court ruling last week has confirmed that the section 14 notice is unenforceable. Bin workers have taken the opportunity to walk in front of the depot gates again, causing a shutdown of all three yards.

The council has been slow to agree to further talks – black bags piling up in the streets again will get their attention! With the picketing stepping up, now is the time for the union to step up activity beyond the picket line as well.

Unite has begun a campaign of city centre leafleting and canvassing of local areas. An appeal to members of other union branches in the area for help with this can mobilise the widespread public support that’s out there for the strike. If needs be, bin worker reps could make visits to other unionised workplaces in the city asking for support.

Socialist Party members have participated in the picketing of firms involved in strike breaking, such as Tom White Waste in Coventry, which has been providing scab lorries and crews to Birmingham City Council. Flyering of the offices of ‘Job&Talent’ and other agencies providing workers to cover Unite members’ jobs can give the council less room for manoeuvre.

On top of this, more mass pickets like the one that shut down Lifford Lane two weeks ago, and a weekend demonstration led by the workers like the one organised in the 2017 strike can show that it’s the pro-cuts councillors who are in the minority, not the bin workers!

Unite launch fair funding campaign

It’s not just bin workers and it’s not just Birmingham that’s facing savage cuts. Nearly half of councils in England are at risk of bankruptcy, due to years of Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and Green administrations accepting funding cuts from central government.

Unite has launched a campaign for fair funding for local councils. Unite’s official policy, long fought for by Socialist Party members and passed at the 2021 policy conference just weeks after Sharon Graham’s election as general secretary, is to demand that Labour councils refuse to implement the then Tory government’s cuts and instead pass no-cuts needs budgets. This is even more important with a Labour government. 

This should be the basis for building a mass campaign, inviting other unions with members in local government, to demand not just relief from debt and interest payments, but increased funding to restore what’s been taken in the last 15 years of cuts.

To make this happen needs serious mobilisation but the support that’s been shown for the bin strike by other council union branches across the UK shows it is possible. And it will need political pressure, with Unite writing to every councillor ahead of next year’s elections asking if they will vote against further cuts – and if they won’t, the union should be prepared to sponsor its own candidates.

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Birmingham bin strike: Blocking Coventry council’s strike-breaking

Rob Thompson, Coventry Socialist Party

For the second week running, Socialist Party members in Coventry assisted in blocking the Ryton Lane depot, in solidarity with the Birmingham bin strikers. Under orders from Coventry Labour council, Tom White Waste company (TWW) have been deploying agency workers from the depot to try to break the Birmingham bin strike.

Despite being a small team, the pickets at Ryton Lane successfully delayed agency workers by four hours on both days. These delays completely disrupted the efforts of the agency and prevented them from undermining the strikers.

The pickets weren’t without resistance. On 8 May, there were reckless attempts to drive the lorries through the picket. On 15 May, agency workers locked arms to try to walk the lorries out, forcefully pushing picketers in the process.

Panicked police officers struggled to maintain control when a riled-up agency worker physically picked a Socialist Party member up to move her from the road. But the picket stayed calm and stood firm. Agency workers were unable to walk a single lorry out.

Party member Frank reported that “by standing our ground against intimidation, we are highlighting the importance of the strikes and the strength in solidarity.” Our members made this appeal to agency workers.

Socialist Party members cited law showing agency strikebreaking activity to be illegal. They also explained how the picket was a reasonable measure to prevent interference in a lawful trade union dispute between Unite and Birmingham City Council.

TWW is wholly owned by Coventry City Council. The council has already been criticised for using £7.2 million of taxpayers’ money to bail the waste firm out in January of this year. This comes after a £22.7 million loan issued by the council to the firm in 2022. Picketers commented that the day-wage agency workers appear unprepared, and without proper PPE. It shouldn’t the job of a Labour council to break strikes.