Is a bin strike coming to your area? (2025)

The Birmingham bin workers’ strike is showing no signs of slowing after members of Unite overwhelmingly rejected a deal from the council.

The union said the offer still includes substantial pay cuts for workers and is “totally inadequate”.

Birmingham City Council maintains that no worker would lose any money and have been offered alternative employment at the same pay, driver training or voluntary redundancy.

Despite the ongoing strike, Birmingham Council’s Craig Cooper told the BBC he expected all residents to see “one household collection every week” by the weekend.

Now, nonetheless, union leaders are warning bin strikes could flare up in other parts of the country.

Unite General Secretary, Sharon Graham, told LBC on Tuesday: “If other councils decide to make low paid workers pay for bad decisions that they did not make, workers paying the price yet again, then absolutely, of course, we all have to take action in those other areas.”

Why strike action could spread

Onay Kasab, Unite’s national lead officer, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there is “potential” for strike action in other parts of the country if local authorities cut the pay of public service workers.

He said: “Well, if other local authorities look to cut the pay of essential public service workers, then there is the potential for strike action spreading.”

Kasab added: “If the pay of public service workers is attacked in other local authorities, then we shouldn’t be surprised when people take action.”

Another strike involving Unite refuse workers, which has led to the closure of recycling sites across the city, has already begun in Sheffield.

Meanwhile, refuse workers in Peterborough, represented by a second union, the GMB, have voted in favour of industrial action after rejecting a pay offer in February.

Birmingham refuse workers began an all-out strike on 11 March. As houses were left without bin collections, Birmingham council declared a major incident on 31 March.

Residents in the city have been warned of serious public health risks as bin strikes have left rats crawling the streets, while mounds of waste pile high.

The strike started over a long-running dispute concerning the role of the waste recycling and collection officer (WRCO), which the council said it would now scrap.

The role, which pays more than other jobs, was created after another bin strike in 2017. However, lawyers have successfully argued a WRCO does not take on any extra responsibilities and was set up just to be able to pay employees higher wages.

The move by the council, the largest in the UK, to axe the position was ultimately done to save money – something that was accelerated by a landmark equal pay ruling against the city in 2023, costing the authority £760m.

Following the ruling, Birmingham was forced to serve a Section 114 notice of effective bankruptcy and is now under the direction of government-appointed commissioners.

Birmingham, though, is not the only council facing these kinds of equal pay disputes.

Similar claims are thought to have been made by the GMB union against the councils of Brighton and Hove, Coventry, Glasgow, Barnet, Southampton, Leeds and Cumbria.

“If you want to look at where future strikes might be, look at where equal pay claims are being brought,” one Government source told The Times, adding: “Councils might need to look again at their pay structures and make any problematic roles redundant.”

Other councils that may look to save money by cutting WRCO roles – a decision which Unite says will make 150 of its members in Birmingham £8,000 worse off – include those that are at risk of falling into bankruptcy by next year.

According to the National Audit Office, this could apply to half of all councils. However, some councils have already issued warnings of a potential Section 114 notice in the past 12 months.

These include Warrington, North Somerset, Cheshire East, Dudley and Kirklees.

Talks aimed at resolving the all-out strike in Birmingham have ended without a resolution.

Graham said the community was paying the price of Government inaction.

“If the Government were really concerned about the residents of Birmingham they would get the decision-makers in a room of which they are clearly one, to ensure that Unite’s solutions on the table were adopted,” Graham said.

“The bottom line about this dispute is that these workers, woke up one morning to be told they would be taking up to an £8,000 pay cut. They are being made to pay the price for austerity and bad decisions by Birmingham City Council.”

The council has thanked residents for its “continued patience under difficult circumstances”, adding: “The daily blocking of our depots by pickets has meant that we cannot get our vehicles out to collect waste from residents.”

Health Secretary Wes Streeting previously told Times Radio he was “concerned about the public health situation” in Birmingham.

“As the bin bags are piling up, we see rats and other vermin crawling around,” he said. “That’s not good for public health. I think this dispute has escalated way out of hand.”