The last week has seen remarkable twists and turns in the Birmingham refuse collectors’ dispute. We have seen the Assistant General Secretary of Unite, Howard Beckett, and acting Regional Secretary of Unite in the West Midlands, being called a liar by John Clancy the Labour council leader.
Clancy stated categorically that there was no agreement, whilst Howard Beckett insisted that there was, stating in public that Birmingham City Council is now effectively in dispute with Unite and not just its own bin men and warning that Birmingham Labour councillors were about to find out what that meant.
We have seen ACAS releasing a statement in reply to Squawkbox that began:
ACAS can confirm that an agreement was reached between Birmingham City Council and Unite the Union on the 15th August 2017, following discussions at ACAS. The terms of the agreement were made public by ACAS at the request of both parties, in a press release agreed with both parties. The text of the press release issued at the time follows.
“Following discussions at ACAS the following terms have been agreed:
Birmingham City Council and Unite the Union have today made sufficient progress in their talks for the Shop Stewards to pause industrial action.
Birmingham City Council cabinet members have agreed in principle that the grade 3 posts will be maintained. Consequently, there are no redundancy steps in place.
But the biggest revelation has been that Labour cabinet members voted 7 to 3 to support the deal until Stella Manzie the interim Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council returned from holiday fuming stating that the City could not afford the deal.
Clearly she had carpeted Clancy, instructed him to tear up the deal, leading to the grotesque chaos of a Labour Council issuing 113 redundancy notices to its grade 3 workers on the bin service, without the statutory consultation period.
In addition, the council has resorted to some of the worst strikebreaking tactics used by any council in recent years: these reportedly include (a) the unlawful employment of both agency Labour and their own workers from other services at evenings and weekends (b) the punitive reduction from £8.50 to £7.50 in the amount paid to agency grade 2 workers (c) disciplinary action against a Unite shop steward on spurious grounds and (d) intimidatory letters being sent to individual workers at home.
The facts of the dispute are that the council want to downgrade grade 3 workers to grade 2, removing the health and safety role at the back of the wagon, cutting people’s wages by up to 25% from £21,000 per annum to £16,000. The savings annually within the bins service will barely reach £600,000, merely 3 times the cost of their interim chief executive.
The £12 million in losses sustained service are down to bad management which any bin man on the picket line can explain. However, the workers are well aware that they are merely a test case and that if Stella Manzie succeeds in breaking the union here then she will turn her sights on other sections the council workforce.
Stella Manzie’s unelected abuse of power will be reminiscent to those with long memories of the negation of democracy in Liverpool City Council when the Socialist councillors were removed from office. Unfortunately, John Clancy and his cabinet appear not to have the resolve to stand up against such clear naked contempt of the democratically elected leadership and such an unprecedented attack on the pay and conditions of the council’s skilled manual workforce.
There are signs however that the left wing of the Labour Party in Birmingham do not intend to let the political challenge go unmet: Momentum supporters within Edgbaston constituency are understood to have contacted a left-wing member of the panel and asked him to stand against Clancy in the upcoming council candidate selection meeting in Quinton Ward where he is councillor.
This will be a welcome move to bolster an increasingly militant industrial campaign with a clear political challenge to those who call themselves Labour councillors, many of whom claim Unite membership: ‘defend your class or stand aside for others who will!’
Sam Clemens
Unite the Union, West Midlands Regional Committee (personal capacity)
September 8 2017
