In scenes reminiscent of Britain’s Winter of Discontent of 1978/1979, overflowing bins, and piles of black bin bags, alongside assorted plastic bags and cardboard boxes have come to line the streets of Birmingham, a former major industrial powerhouse and also the second-largest city in the UK. Rotting food is attracting cockroaches, mice, rats “the size of kittens or small dogs”, and foxes; maggots are crawling around in the rubbish; and the media is baying for the blood of the “fat cats” at the helm of Birmingham City Council. Pest controller Will Timms, Birmingham’s “rat man” and a key figure at WJ Pest Solutions in Rubery- “We take on all types of jobs from small domestic work to larger commercial projects”- has become one of the busiest persons in the city as he works relentlessly, seven days a week, to keep up with the opportunistic scavengers. Fly tippers have taken advantage of the chaos, dumping mattresses, sofas, and other discarded items of furniture on the streets. It is also feared that bin raiders may seek out items of mail and discarded documents from the mounting collections of waste, with the intention of retrieving personal information for nefarious purposes.
Intermittent action since January 2025 evolved into a walkout by around 400 staff on 11 March. Birmingham City Council leader John Cotton declared a major public health incident on 31 March. By this time, an estimated 17,000 tonnes of rubbish had accumulated across the city. The blockage of waste depots by daily pickets had reportedly contributed to the dire situation, partly justifying the council’s declaration. Normally, around 200 waste collection vehicles are in use in Birmingham, deployed in eight-hourly shifts. The declaration of a major incident allowed the commissioning of 35 extra vehicles to help clear the city’s streets.
Members of the Unite union are protesting the abolition of around 170 “safety-critical” Grade 3 Waste and Recycling Collection Officer (WRCO) jobs, which will leave those affected up to £8,000 poorer annually if they were to stay on as Grade 2 employees. WRCOs were introduced in the aftermath of an earlier strike in Birmingham in 2017, to serve as the ‘fourth man’ in a four-man bin truck staff, but their role is now being considered redundant and unaffordable, as well as unique to the city and hence unjustifiable. Offers by the council to retrain those affected as LGV drivers or to take up alternative roles in street cleaning or elsewhere in the council have been rejected by around 40 men, who have also not taken up offers of voluntary redundancy or one-off payments.
The reason behind the current situation dates back to September 2023, when the cash-strapped Labour-run Birmingham City Council filed a section 114 notice as it was unable to pay a “potential liability” related to the settling of backdated equal-pay claims, having also heavily overspent on IT system upgrades. The UK’s largest local authority thereby effectively declared itself bankrupt, put a hold on all non-essential spending, and was unable to take on any new spending commitments. It was almost inevitable that road maintenance and waste collection would eventually feel the pinch from cuts to local services. Deputy Prime Minister and Communities Secretary Angela Rayner and Local Government Minister Jim McMahon visited Birmingham on 10 April, in an attempt to resolve the situation with an “improved offer,” without much success.
Binmen’s strikes are by no means unusual, and have normally been driven by claims for better pay and working conditions. Noteworthy examples from the past were seen in London in 1969, Birmingham in 1972, Glasgow in 1975, among others.
Because of public health concerns, some are calling for the army to be mobilised for waste collection and disposal. Meanwhile, community volunteers and neighbouring councils have stepped in to help clear up the mess. The current strike is emblematic of simmering tensions between workforce and management at times of austerity, during which both sides take up entrenched positions with little attempt at compromise. Whatever the root causes, protecting the public health demands support from the Westminster government in the immediate term, while the underlying disputes continue to be settled in the background. Binmen are an indispensable part of our civic workforce. Their absence is most certainly being noticed by all citizens and cannot be tolerated any longer.
Ashis Banerjee