BIRMINGHAM, England — A lively public meeting in support of striking Birmingham refuse workers, members of Unite, was organized by the Manchester Trades Union Council July 9.
“Birmingham Council thinks the way out of their debt is to put workers into debt,” striker and shop steward Mike Masters told the meeting. The council is seeking to impose wage cuts of up to 25% or 8,000 pounds ($10,730) per year. “Why should we be made to pay?” he said. “They’re not just cutting our wages, they’re attacking our right to strike.”
Hours earlier John Cotton, leader of the Birmingham City Council and the strikers’ boss, announced there would be no further negotiations with the union. He said all the striking workers would be fired and then “offered” their jobs back at lower wages with a different job classification.
Three workers from a local aerospace plant attended the meeting, handing Masters a solidarity card signed by 20 workers and union stewards from the Unite North West 0619 branch. Masters told them that the strikers have restarted some “slow walking,” delaying trucks’ entry and exit from depots, after a court injunction initially restricted picketing. “We’re picketing to win,” he said.
“The Birmingham bin workers’ fight is not just about pay or conditions,” Sajad Ahmad, one of the three aerospace workers, told the Militant. “It’s about dignity and respect. Their struggle is our struggle.”
The week before, striker and shop steward Danny Taylor and Unite organizer Pete Randle toured workplaces in the Manchester area. They joined the picket line of Unison strikers at Manchester Metropolitan University. Over 5,000 pounds was collected in contributions to the refuse workers strike fund, Chris Neville, Manchester Trades Union Council president, told the meeting.
“When you get solidarity, it means the world to striking workers,” Randle added.
“What Birmingham City Council has proposed is fire and rehire,” Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said in a July 9 statement. “Fire and rehire” is a measure used by employers to attack wages and conditions won through union action over years.
The Labour Party government has given full backing to the council’s attacks. “Unite should suspend the strike and work with the council,” a representative of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, told BBC News.
At the picket line July 10 dozens gathered round a loudspeaker to hear a radio interview with Cotton. “The council is acting from a position of weakness,” striker Paul Jackson told the Militant.
The firing of the strikers “changes nothing from the union’s point of view, nor the backing the union will extend to the strike,” Unite national officer Onay Kasab told the strikers to applause.
Graham addressed the annual Durham Miners’ Gala attended by thousands of trade unionists July 12. She said that strikers like the Birmingham workers were the “vanguard of our movement.”
If the council and government get away with pay cuts, council after council across the country will follow suit, she said.
Andrés Mendoza and Pete Clifford contributed to this article.