BIRMINGHAM, England — “We will not be pushed aside,” strike leader Danny Taylor told an enthusiastic crowd of hundreds of striking refuse workers at the Atlas depot here March 19. The workers, members of the Unite union, have been on strike for over a year against wage cuts. The bosses’ “union-busting tactics have failed. We are not going away, we’re determined and united,” Taylor said.
He spoke alongside Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham just days after a high court judge imposed a fine totaling 435,000 pounds ($582,000) on the union.
The workers’ employer, the Labour-run City Council, brought the court action claiming union members had breached a court order that prevented workers from interfering with the bosses’ strikebreaking operation, by “slow-walking” at the entrance to refuse depots. This picketing had given a powerful boost to the strike.
“They tried to break you with agency workers, but agency workers have joined the picket line,” Graham told the crowd. More than 50 agency workers have joined the strike, a mark of its strength.
She reported that the union’s executive had cut its annual contribution to the Labour Party by 40%, a cut of 580,000 pounds. “As for the fine, every single penny will be paid out of the union’s Labour affiliation,” she said, pointing to the Labour government’s backing for the council bosses’ assault on the union.
Several strikers described how they’re now organizing to distribute leaflets and posters about their fight door to door throughout the Birmingham area.
Some 50 strikers protested outside a meeting of the nearby Labour-led City Council in Coventry March 25. A company named Tom White Waste, which is owned by the council there, has been sending up to 25 scab refuse trucks a day to Birmingham.
“A Labour council is sending crews over to Birmingham to help another Labour council break a strike,” Matthew Reid, the Unite convenor for the Birmingham strikers, told the BBC.