The dispute between refuse workers and Birmingham City Council is set to run well into 2026 as agency workers vote to join the strike action.
The Birmingham bin strikes are set to continue beyond next year’s local elections in May, unless a deal is reached, after workers overwhelmingly voted to extend their strike action.
The refuse workers, who are employed directly by the council, will be joined by agency staff after they voted in favour of strike action following claims of ‘bullying, harassment and intimidation’.
Unite confirmed it had balloted 22 agency staff, with 18 voting to join official picket lines from 1 December.
Unite says workloads for agency staff are unsustainable because there are no recycling or garden waste collections, meaning that all refuse is disposed of in a single bin, which is often ‘extremely heavy and overflowing’.
The ballot came after a video was leaked that appeared to show a member of staff for Birmingham City Council saying agency workers will be banned from permanent roles if they join strike action.
In the recording, the speaker says: ‘people that do decide to join the picket line, then the council have confirmed to us that they are not going to get a permanent job’.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the vote marked a ‘real escalation’ in the dispute and said agency workers were joining the strike action due to the ‘terrible way they have been treated’ by Job and Talent and Birmingham City Council.
Graham said: “Birmingham council is spending a fortune it doesn’t have on a dispute that could easily be resolved by agreeing a fair deal for workers.”
A spokesperson for Birmingham City Council told Circular Online that Unite has rejected all its offers to resolve the dispute.
The spokesperson said: “A small number of agency staff are in a separate dispute with Job & Talent. The city council has contingency plans and will continue to look to maintain residents with a minimum of one collection a week.”
“We have been collecting an average of approximately 1,330 tonnes of kerbside waste every day, more than we did prior to industrial action, and over the last six months we have collected over 100,000 tonnes of kerbside waste.”
Unite the Union and Birmingham City Council have been in dispute since last summer, with strike action beginning in January 2025, over the council’s decision to remove Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) roles.
Unite says there have been no formal negotiations over ending the dispute since May.
In April, Birmingham City Council declared a major incident over the backlog of waste on the streets, with over 17,000 tonnes of waste being uncollected across Birmingham at one point.