Birmingham bin strike: Why are workers striking and how long will it last? | UK News

Stacking black garbage bags fill the sidewalks of Birmingham as the city handles a continuous brick.

It is estimated that 17,000 tonnes of waste remain, while residents have started complaining about ‘rats as big as cats’.

Birmingham Town Council declared that a Big incident Mondayand said the ‘deplorable’ move was taken in response to public health issues, as picklings blocked depots and prevented waste vehicles from collecting garbage.

The overall strike began on March 11, but waste collections have been disrupted since January.

Here is everything you need to know about the strike and how long it can take.

Why do workers hit?

Members of the Unite Union stopped due to a long -standing dispute over the role of waste recycling and collection officer (WRCO) removed.

The union claims that the relocation will leave £ 8,000 worse.

More than 350 workers started a series of hikes in January and decided to perform in an indefinite strike on March 11, citing fear of further attacks on their work, payment and conditions.

Unite says the dispute will not end unless the “lot of damage” cuts are reversed to the wages of the collectors.

The council said it had been scraping the WRCO role in putting the city’s waste operations in accordance with national practice and to improve its waste collection service.

This refuted the demands of the union and said that only 17 staff members would lose a maximum amount of just over £ 6,000 to payment.

What were the consequences?

Residents have complained that the mounting of garbage is a risk of public health, with decaying foods that attract foxes, cockroaches and rats.

One local, Fayzah IFTIKHR, told Sky News Correspondent Alice Porter That she lived in Birmingham and “never saw it that way”.

“It was really horrible. They didn’t collect our bowls, and they were crowded. It’s very stinky, we’ve seen rats. It’s not good conditions to live in, especially not in 2025,” she said.

“I’ve been born on this street and have never seen it that way. It’s not good for someone’s health.

“I know what they are striking for, but we suffer, the people in our streets are suffering.”

Tim Huxtable, a city councilor of Tory Birmingham, told Sky’s Sam Coates That it “really all comes down” and does not know when waste is going to be collected is to influence people’s mental health.

The strike meant that the daily rate of accumulation of unfounded waste in the city of 483 tonnes per day in the week of March 10 to 655 tonnes in the week of March 17 and to almost 900 tonnes in the week of March 24 increased.

Normally, the city’s waste teams would make more than half a million collections in a week, with 200 vehicles deployed over eight hours of daily shifts.

How long will it last?

The Birmingham City Council said he hoped that collections would return to normal “as soon as possible”, but so far the talks between Unite and Council officials were not successful.

Both sides said they were open to further negotiations.

By declaring a major incident, the council will be able to increase the availability of street cleaning and the removal of aircraft with another 35 vehicles and crews in the city.

A further focus is on ensuring that Bin trucks can safely enter and leave the waste depots of the council, and to investigate what further support is available from neighboring authorities and the government.

The council website advises residents to collect household waste as normal and leave them out until emptied. Recycling collections are suspended, with people being told to take waste instead of recycling centers.

Council leader John Cotton said he was ‘determined to take every measure’ to address the ‘very serious scenes we now see play out in certain parts of our city’.

Local Government Minister Jim McMahon added that the government is “ready” to respond to any request for extra resources, but insisted that any agreement to end the Bin strike must “maintain value for money”.

Majid Mahmood, cabinet member for environment and transport at the City Council, said last week that the government is willing to work all the time to resolve the dispute.

The UK’s longest bin strike?

The Bin strike in Birmingham is one of the longest the UK has seen over the past year, after entering its fourth week on Tuesday.

In 1970, a strike in London lasted about seven weeks when waste collectors walked out over the payment. The army was sent in to clean the heaps of decaying garbage.

The winter of dissatisfaction in 1978-1979 also led to the stack of garbage on the street, as the waste collection industry joined other unions to claim larger wage increases in response to government caps.

More recently, more than 200 Bin workers in the Wirral went on a week-long strike in 2022, which eventually achieved a 15% wage increase. In the same year, a similar dispute about the payment in Edinburgh rose during the busy festive season of the city in Edinburgh.