Political Editor, BBC West Midlands
Political Reporter, BBC Birmingham
ReutersThe union representing Birmingham’s striking bin workers has broken its near-three-week silence on ongoing negotiations aimed at ending the action to blame the city council for the lack of a deal.
A Unite spokesperson also blamed government-appointed commissioners, who have been overseeing the council’s operations since its effective bankruptcy, for the apparent lack of progress.
An all-out strike over plans to downgrade some roles, which the union says could cost workers £8,000 a year, began on 11 March, following weeks of intermittent walkouts.
Birmingham City Council said it was committed to ending the dispute while the government urged Unite to suspend its strike action.
Talks between the council and Unite have been taking place with conciliation service Acas since the start of May, after previous negotiations to resolve the strike ended without a solution.
The union’s latest statement accuses the council of failing to meet a promised deadline to lay out an offer – and questions the very existence of such an offer.
“Unite deals with thousands of negotiations every year,” said Unite’s General Secretary, Sharon Graham.
“From the council side, the negotiations in this dispute have been a shambles, with the government right at the heart of it.”
Ms Graham called on council leader John Cotton to “stop playing games, get in the room and solve this dispute”.
“The bottom line is that our members can’t afford to have savage pay cuts of up to £8,000 with no mitigation,” she added.
“Until that issue is addressed the strikes will continue.”
A spokesperson for the council said the authority was committed to seeking a negotiated settlement to end the dispute.
They said: “Our focus has been to find a solution to this that does not put the council in a position that compromises us financially or legally. This is why we are committed to making a revised offer.”
The council defended the commissioners and said they were “fully supportive” of finding a solution to the strike.
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson called on Unite to suspend strike action and urged both parties to “reach agreement on a fair and reasonable offer”.
Industrial action has been ongoing since January, when bin workers began a series of walkouts.
That escalated into an all-out strike, now in its eleventh week.
At one point, there were estimated to be 21,000 tonnes of rubbish on Birmingham’s streets and there have been queues of up to a mile at mobile collection points.
The city council has previously defended its job evaluation process as “fair and transparent” and said it was “working hard” to reach a settlement.
Unite was itself previously accused of scuppering a potential deal, a claim which it denied.
Meanwhile, protesters supporting the striking bin workers disrupted a ceremony to mark the election of Birmingham’s new Lord Mayor.
Mayor Zafar Iqbal took up the role on Tuesday but the event saw shouts from the public gallery including one woman angrily yelling: “Could you take an £8,000 pay cut?”
The outgoing Lord Mayor, Ken Wood, shouted back at them to sit down before asking for the gallery to be cleared.
