Cuts to Glasgow bin collections must end

By Matt Dobson

Glasgow’s SNP council is rolling out a cut to bin collections in the north west of the city. The council claim in a public statement in response to opposition from the GMB bin workers trade union that: “The change to three-weekly collections for green bins from houses is all about encouraging households to recycle more.

As a resident in the north east of Glasgow where this cut in collections was first piloted I can fully confirm, as the GMB argue, it only increased piles of waste being dumped next to wheelie bins.

In my back court in Royston, this is the case. The Housing Association continually is contacting tenants about the mess and calling out Pest Control, adding to the pressures of lockdown rather than challenging the cuts program of the council.

The continuing explosion of Glasgow’s rat and vermin population is a consequence of this.

Figures released by UK Pest Control company Pest.co.uk show Glasgow is of the worst cities for rat infestations, with numbers now since the pandemic estimated at 1.3 million. The rats are coming into residential areas starving and trying to nest as restaurants and shops are closed.

In Drumchapel this winter, one of the city’s largest housing schemes which will be affected by the cut to bin collections, parents have complained to the council’s environmental health department about the infestations threat to children’s health and safety. Then, in the same area in January, a bin worker was hospitalised after being scratched by a rat carrying out a collection.

GMB Branch convenor Chris Mitchell said: “Glasgow has a waste crisis fuelled by years of cuts. This incident with the rat attacking a cleansing worker is another example of the impact on its workers and the communities they serve.

The city is in decline and workers in services like mine are totally demoralised. We cannot go on like this – the workforce and the public deserve better.” He added, “we understand the importance of recycling but, we feel, the answer isn’t further restriction of services – its more investment.

“We will now ask the public to support a stop in moving to a three-weekly collection, no more cuts in street bins budget and a far better option for the food waste service.”

Already thousands have signed the GMB petition.

The bin workers in Glasgow have repeatedly shown taking industrial action works during this pandemic. There have been successful walkouts from the bin depots over hand sanitiser and a lack of social distancing over the last 12 months, not to mention cleansing staff heroically supporting the mass equal pay strike in 2018. Further industrial action by bin workers can be posed.

Socialist Party Scotland and the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition says: 

• Public investment not cuts is the way out of Glasgow’s waste crisis.

• We demand a restoration of weekly bin and free uplift collections.

• Jobs could be created by the reinstatement of health and safety protected back court teams

• Give these key workers in cleansing who have protected the city a 15% pay rise

• We support recycling but cuts do not encourage it. As well as cuts to collections there are other reasons for the waste crisis

• Back courts and paths and pavements are frozen up in the winter due to cuts to the councils gritting service and road maintenance, putting your bin out is quite treacherous

• This could be part of a overall fighting no cuts budget policy. Scottish TUSC is standing across Glasgow in the Scottish elections to demand an end to all cuts and that mobilises a mass campaign for the funding Glasgow needs