Brighton and Hove binmen are to strike on Monday, with the union warning of months of possible disruption.
Members of the GMB union voted to start industrial action this Friday, 12 September with an overtime ban and no side waste being collected, followed by a full day of strike action on Monday, 15 September.
The dispute with Brighton and Hove City Council and its CityClean department centres on pay and allowances, and has been ongoing for more than a year.
In a statement, the GMB said: “The council should come back to us quickly and to this time look seriously at settling this long on-going outstanding dispute for good.
“The dispute has come about through the council’s failure to honour agreements over pay and allowances, the failure to consult meaningfully over new working practices and long standing issues over round allocation and distribution.
“This is compounded by further issues around over similar work not attracting equal pay within the council and drivers being unfairly harassed and removed from rounds outside of council policy and procedures.”
Richard Bradley, Brighton and Hove City Council’s head of CityClean and parks said: “I am of course disappointed that the GMB Union has given formal notice of industrial action. This will inevitably cause problems on rounds in the city and I really recognise how difficult this is for residents who have already put up with many weeks and months of disruption.
“The council now has an allowances systems which is fair and equitable across the whole organisation. We have asked the trade union to postpone action and are keen to keep discussions going to try to avoid this action if at all possible.”
You can read a fuller statement from the council here.
The first major strike over pay and allowances was held in summer last year, when rubbish piled up throughout the city.
It centres around a restructure of pay across to bring female unskilled workers in line with male ones – which in practice meant binmen lost out.
New rounds were introduced in October to try and solve the standoff, but the disagreements continued.
A threat to strike this year was called off in April, and the union says this was to allow talks to progress with a pause in public statements.
The talks have now broken down and on Friday, 5 September GMB notified the council industrial action would take place.
Its members voted 89.7% in favour of strike action and 96.4% in favour of action short of a strike action.
Mark Turner, GMB Branch secretary, said “Unfortunately the people of Brighton and Hove will see the service affected potentially for weeks or even months to come as both the continuous part of action short of strike begins to have a long term accumulative effect on the service in the city, on top of the consequence, which I’m sure residents are well aware, of any initial day of industrial action and the further potentially damage to collections following any further added dates.
“The council should come back to us quickly and to this time look seriously at settling this long ongoing outstanding dispute for good.”
You can read the full GMB statement here.
News of the strike has split opinion amongst residents.
Pammy Nas Karim said: “I moved to Brighton to get away from the stench that hung in the London air and have this now! As if we don’t pay our taxes that contribute to the wages of this service that seems non-existent here.”
Jake Beach said: “Respect to the binmen. Maybe now people will see how important to the city they are and how important there job is.”
Whereas Peter Bullock joked: “I thought, they had been on strike for the last three years.”
The city’s Conservatives were quick to condemn the strike. Group leader Geoffrey Theobald said: “There is no call for this – there has been a proper evaluation of the drivers’ jobs and the council is quite right to ensure equality of pay across the whole organisation.
“It would seem that the local GMB leadership just can’t wait to take their members out on strike and cause maximum inconvenience and disruption to the general public.
“This sort of action belongs in the 1970s and in no way reflects the views or wishes of the vast majority of reasonable trade union members, or indeed residents of this city. The council should not give in to their demands.”
