The Birmingham bin strike is the fault of Labour’s austerity 2.0

Keir Starmer has done next to nothing to address the Conservative Party-led austerity cuts that decimated Birmingham city council between 2010 and 2020. The maintenance of George Osborne’s legacy under Labour is austerity 2.0. This is the root cause of the Birmingham bin strike over the removal of a role.

It amounts to a pay cut of up to £8,000 per year for some. Through comparisons with that role, the council owed £250 million in equal pay claims from workers that were assessed to be doing the same job for less pay. But instead of using equal pay to raise wages, the council wants to bring wages down to end the claims.

Birmingham bin strike: austerity, continued

It’s clear Birmingham council’s cuts to staff, wages and children’s social services stem from central government austerity. In the decade from 2010 to 2020, the government forced the council to make £736 million in austerity cuts. And the council’s spending power decreased by over 36%. This has also led to a council tax rise of 7.5%, even though Starmer pledged to freeze that very tax. In February, Starmer issued £180 million for the council. That’s far less than the Conservative cuts, and it is in the form of loans that the council must pay back.

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has drawn ire through urging the bin workers to take a new deal to end the dispute. But Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said the offer was only “a partial deal on pay protection for a few”.

And one Unite union member made quite the observation:

The council are saying that we should share the pain but not one councillor, including the leader of the council, has been asked to give up a quarter of their pay. We thought when Labour came in they would stop what was happening, we were wrong.

Workers taking part in the Birmingham bin strike have been demonstrating just how necessary their work is. Footage shows large piles of rubbish on streets of Birmingham attracting flies, foxes and other animals.

An idea to consider

One option to avoid situations like the Birmingham bin strike, which would also increase people’s stake in the public sector, is that more of us could dedicate a portion of their time to public sector work. If the UK’s 10.7 million unemployed and ‘economically inactive’ people spent ten hours a week doing a public sector job, half of the total public sector work would be covered. That’s without considering the current public sector workers, where roles could be job shared. And if everyone of working age dedicated five hours a week to public sector work, the entire public sector would be sorted.

46% of public jobs are specialist like police officers, teachers, nurses etc, and require more dedication and practice. But it is an idea of how we could address at least some of the more menial work without people committing a 40 hour week to such a role. It could also address the fact that some people are working long weeks and some people are unemployed and ‘economically inactive’.

In Birmingham, equal pay should mean a rise, not a decrease. But it’s clear legacy austerity is to blame for the Birmingham bin strike – and Labour’s ushering in of austerity 2.0.

Featured image via the Canary