Birmingham bins: ‘We could see the same strikes around the country’
Bin bags are piled high on Birmingham streets, as the council attempts to negotiate with workers unions to settle a pay dispute over its employees. How did it get here, and how widespread will the situation’s effects be felt?
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In brief…
- Birmingham refuse collectors have been on strike since 11 March 2025, with mountains of bin bags on the streets attracting “rats the size of cats” and sparking official health warnings.
- The strike has been caused due to the council’s bankruptcy following the loss of an equal pay dispute, leading to a cap on refuse collectors’ wages.
- If other equal pay claims are filed against councils across the UK, the situation could spread, The News Agents say.
What’s the story?
People in Birmingham have complained of seeing "rats as big as cats" amid its ongoing rubbish crisis, and while this is almost certainly an exaggeration, things are pretty unpleasant right now in the UK's second-largest city.
A strike by Birmingham's refuse collectors has been ongoing since 11 March 2025, but collections have been disrupted since January, in a dispute over wages stemming from an equal pay claim brought by council cleaners over pay disparity.
The council has had to dish out years of backpay to cleaners, who won an employment tribunal which decided that cleaners and refuse collectors jobs constitute ‘work of equal value’ and therefore they should be paid the same. The outcome resulted in it holding down the wages of refuse collectors due to the financial loss – which led to the strike.
“Birmingham's bankruptcy is a result of a long standing equal pay claim brought by women workers of the council, current and historic, who have said that they were not paid the same amount as men were over many decades,” says Lewis Goodall.
“It looks likely that similar pay claims could be brought to different councils across the country, which will imperil an already very powerless local government set of finances.”
Birmingham residents are now living with the stench of rotting waste as bin bags pile up on the streets.
The UK Health Security Agency has issued a public health warning to Birmingham locals, due to the risk associated with household waste, and health secretary Wes Streeting has said he is “concerned” by the situation.
Birmingham council have been engaged in talks with the Unite union but, as yet, no deal has been struck. The union claims workers are being forced onto pay rates barely above minimum wage, which the council denies.
Emergency bin crews have been working to clear the backlog of bin-bags and neighbouring councils have offered help.
What questions does this raise about pay disparity?
While the question for people in Birmingham is simple – when are the bins getting collected – the situation also raises the issue of men and women being paid differently in the same, or similar roles.
“It's a story essentially about employment rights, and that's why we could see the same strikes around the country,” says Emily Maitlis.
Emily says the question raised is; if women are doing one kind of job (such as cleaning) and men are doing another (refuse collection), should there be parity in what they are paid?
But, she adds, councils may face issues when jobs which traditionally attract men – such as refuse collection – are more likely to have higher salaries than other roles, such as cleaners.
Jon Sopel says the key phrase in all this is “work of equal value”.
“Is a person working in the canteen doing work of equal value, to the person who is cleaning the offices, to the person who is a manager,” he says.
“How do you decide what is work of equal value?”
What’s The News Agents’ take?
Whatever the UK may be facing right now, nothing is as strikingly visual as the sight of uncollected bin bags on Britain’s streets.
“Nothing demonstrates a decaying country which is on its knees, better than bins on the streets,” says Lewis.
“Rubbish collection is not a sexy topic, but it is one which obviously really matters, and has been subject to cut after cut after cut for about 15 years.
“We know that local government spending power has fallen between 20 and 40% on average, depending on the local authority, and there are a series of different strikes which are in the pipeline in the next few weeks and months in very different parts of the country.”
Strikes are already underway in Sheffield, and set to take place in Brighton and Barnet, north London, in the coming weeks.
Should things continue to escalate, and spread to other councils across the country, there could be echoes of the winter of 1978/79, when widespread strikes brought the UK to a grinding halt.