Birmingham councillor rages at bin strikes as waste left uncollected for 10 weeks

GB News

Birmingham City Councillor Meirion Jenkins has hit out at the "laughing stock" of the city's bin strikes as the walkout by refuse workers passes 100 days.The bitter dispute with the council was triggered over equal pay for waste vehicle drivers, with more than 200 workers facing pay cuts by the Labour-run administration.FULL STORY HERE.

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00:00Merrin, this is becoming an international disgrace. Birmingham is ridiculed around the world.

00:07101 days and still no resolution.

00:11Yeah, it is. We're all off in stock. It's 101 days, by the way, since all-out strike action began.

00:17But there's been six months of strike action since the beginning of this dispute.

00:22By the way, those insults were being shouted from the public gallery of council leader John Cotton,

00:28not John Clancy.

00:30Sorry.

00:31That was a previous leader that Labour sacked.

00:34OK, thanks for clarifying.

00:36How do they fix this?

00:38Well, we've explained what needs to be done.

00:41By the way, we asked for a debate on this strike and Labour even refused a debate on the strike.

00:47And, you know, I mean, everything that you said is true about how bad it is.

00:52And just to give you an example, just outside my ward,

00:55I've got a school that hasn't had a waste collection for 10 weeks.

01:00And, you know, all those leftover school dinners that for some reason weren't eaten have been sitting in those bags.

01:07Now, with the temperature climbing to 29 degrees, it's, you know, it's becoming a real health problem.

01:13And in fact, the council is having to spend about 100,000 a month on action just to address those aspects of the health considerations.

01:24So it's it's that I mean, I've got old people's homes in my ward,

01:28which I'm constantly having to chase to get those collected.

01:31Because you can imagine when the sort of human waste that you get in old people's homes tends to build up.

01:36It's got to be people are keeping the waste in their showers and things in bags in their showers and things like that.

01:42It's it's it's every bit as bad as the pictures that you're showing.

01:44But, you know, in the case of things like schools and old people's homes, you know, it's particularly acute.

01:50It must just it must stink in certain parts of the city.

01:53Well, yes, if you if you go to places where there's 10 weeks worth of school dinner waste built up, it will stink and it will and it will smell.

02:03But you ask the question, what do what do we need to do about it?

02:06I mean, we've set out we've set out the plan that needs to be followed.

02:10But you've got to remember in all this, because about half the cabinet are members of Unite, you know, they're conflicted.

02:16It is a conflict of interest in terms of the action that they can take.

02:19But what what needs to be done is, first of all, we've got to remove the equal pay risk.

02:23Which means we have to complete the gradient exercise, which makes it then much more difficult for people to raise equal pay claims.

02:30And at the moment, every month that goes by, and this this exercise was supposed to be finished by April.

02:36It's still going on every month that goes by.

02:38We rack up an additional equal pay bill of up to 14 million pounds.

02:43Then what needs to be done is we need to make the offers subject to a time limit.

02:49So the offers that have been made to the grade threes that are going to be downgraded.

02:53And also now they've discovered they have to downgrade the drivers as well from grade four.

02:57So they've opened up a whole new front.

02:59Those offers have to be time limited to put an end to it.

03:03And of course, it is very difficult for the council leader because you can see that, you know,

03:07the people who support the strike, who are members of his own movement, are shouting insults at him.

03:13I'm so sorry to interrupt you.

03:14We have run out of time, but I think you gave a really good assessment there of where we're at there.

03:17But our hearts go out to the people of Birmingham.

03:20Marion Jenkins there, a shadow cabinet member for finance at Birmingham.

03:23Bankrupt Labour Council.

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