More negotiations in Birmingham bin dispute

More negotiations between Birmingham City Council and the Unite union are expected to take place, as the strike by bin workers continues.

On Monday, union members rejected the authority’s latest pay offer, nearly five weeks after hundreds began all-out action.

Unite has said the offer was “totally inadequate” and did not address potential pay cuts for 200 drivers, but the council stated it was fair and included options for affected workers.

The authority’s leader, John Cotton, said it knew “services haven’t been delivering for parts of the city well enough for long enough” and wanted to find a negotiated solution.

The standoff involving the Labour-run council has led to bin bags and fly-tipped rubbish piling up on streets.

On Tuesday, the authority said the amount of uncollected waste had peaked at 22,000 tonnes and it was on track to clear a backlog by the weekend.

Collections would focus first on “the poorest parts” of the city “affected the most” by the strike, it added.

Cotton told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday: “We want to find a negotiated solution to this.

“But what we cannot do is take steps that result in us creating further equal pay problems for the council, or indeed prejudice in our budget position, and also the service fundamentally needs reform.

“We know that the services haven’t been delivering for parts of the city well enough for long enough, and that’s something that we need to change.”

The leader stated the council had “to be undertaking a full job evaluation process” and it was “doing this in partnership with the trade unions using a nationally recognised job evaluation methodology”.

Cotton said the authority was “absolutely focused” on ensuring clearance of the accumulation of waste, and it would be “addressing any incidents” that had arisen around pest infestation.

A rally took place on Tuesday outside the Birmingham City Council House building with dozens of Unite officials, bin workers and supporters attending.