Birmingham’s Bin Strike: What Councillors Know, and What the Public Has Not Been Told
Why is a Labour council accused of strike breaking? Why is public money being spent at what appears to be any cost to defeat a workforce rather than resolve a dispute?
GRIT has been given sight of a letter sent privately to Birmingham City councillors by Unite the Union, representing striking bin workers and agency staff. It was not issued as a press release. It was not intended for public consumption. It was circulated directly to elected members as part of an ongoing series of briefings about the dispute.
That distinction matters.
Because this letter does not trade in slogans or theatrics. It deals in money, legal risk, and decisions already taken. Read carefully, it tells a very different story from the one Birmingham residents are hearing publicly.
Far from being a stalemate born of confusion, the strike now appears to be sustained by deliberate choices. Choices that councillors have been repeatedly warned about. Choices that Unite says amount to illegal strike breaking. And choices that are costing council tax payers vastly more than settlement ever would.
Most importantly of all, the letter makes one thing clear. Birmingham’s Labour councillors cannot plausibly say they do not know what is happening.
Following the Money
At the centre of Unite’s warning is a simple question. What has Birmingham City Council been spending public money on since the strike began, and why?
To answer that, Unite commissioned forensic accountants to analyse the council’s own spending data. What they found is difficult to dismiss.
Since January 2025, monthly spending on agency labour and outsourcing has risen to more than three times its pre strike level. On agency staff alone, spending has almost doubled. On average, the council is now spending an additional £1.1 million per month, with £517,000 of that increase attributable purely to agency labour.
This is not a marginal fluctuation. It is a sustained and structural change.
The council was already using agency workers before the dispute. What has changed is the scale. The volume of agency labour being brought in since the strike began far exceeds previous levels.
Unite’s conclusion is blunt. The only plausible explanation for this increase is that additional agency workers have been brought in to cover the work of striking employees.
If that is the case, the union says, the council is breaking the law.
What the Law Actually Says, and Why It Exists
UK law is explicit on this point.
Under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, employment agencies are prohibited from supplying workers to perform the duties of employees engaged in lawful industrial action. The purpose of the law is straightforward. It exists to prevent disputes being dragged out by substitution rather than resolved through negotiation.
This is not an obscure technical rule. It is a core protection in UK employment law.
The previous Conservative government attempted to lift this ban in 2022. That change was challenged by trade unions and quashed by the High Court in July 2023, restoring the long standing prohibition after the court found the government had failed to consult properly.
Breaches of these regulations can constitute a criminal offence for employment agencies, punishable by an unlimited fine. Parliament has long recognised that strike breaking by substitution undermines collective bargaining and escalates conflict.
This is the legal context in which Unite’s allegations sit.
Why Bin Workers and Agency Staff Are on Strike in the First Place
It is also worth reminding ourselves why bin workers and agency staff are on strike at all.
This dispute did not arise from militancy for its own sake. It stems from a deeply flawed job evaluation process, pay downgrading, and fire and rehire tactics that left workers facing significant losses through no fault of their own. Unite’s position has consistently been that these changes were imposed unfairly, without proper consultation, and in ways that stripped away long established terms and protections.
Agency staff became drawn into the dispute because they, too, were affected by the council’s approach. Some took strike action in solidarity. Others did so because of their own treatment. All found themselves operating in an increasingly hostile environment.
Unite has raised concerns about intimidation during the dispute, including reports of refuse vehicles being sledged and workers being harassed while carrying out lawful industrial action. These are not minor claims. They speak to a situation in which tension has been allowed to escalate rather than be defused through dialogue.
The right to strike exists precisely to prevent disputes descending into confrontation. It is meant to be a safety valve, not a trigger for escalation.
Switching Agencies, Not Changing Course
The sequence of events that followed is central to Unite’s claim.
When agency workers supplied by Job and Talent themselves began strike action on 1 December, Birmingham City Council did not reduce its reliance on agency labour. It did not pause to reassess. It did not return to negotiations.
Instead, it changed supplier.
Twenty new temporary workers were brought in through Smart Solutions and deployed at the Smithfield depot. At the same time, Smart Solutions began advertising temporary bin worker roles with the council online.
To Unite, this distinction is meaningless. Changing agencies while continuing to replace the labour of striking workers does not alter the legal position. If the work being done substitutes for that of employees engaged in lawful industrial action, the prohibition still applies.
Councillors have been told this directly, through private briefings like the letter seen by GRIT.
Paying More, Getting Less
What makes this approach even harder to justify is that it is not saving money.
The council’s own Director of Finance previously estimated the cost of the dispute would reach £14 million by the end of September 2025. Independent analysts suggested that figure could rise to £26 million if no deal was reached by March. Neither estimate accounted for lost commercial contracts.
Unite’s community outreach has uncovered a quieter but more damaging consequence. Schools and other organisations are abandoning council waste services altogether, switching to private providers because of missed collections and fears about hygiene and vermin.
These contracts are unlikely to return quickly, if at all. The longer the dispute continues, the more permanent the damage becomes.
Council tax payers are not funding a solution. They are funding delay.
The Legal Avalanche Waiting to Fall
Alongside the financial cost sits a growing legal exposure that councillors have been repeatedly warned about.
Unite currently has around 500 live legal claims against Birmingham City Council. These include claims arising from the job evaluation process, fire and rehire tactics, failures to carry out collective consultation, unfair dismissal, inducement, discrimination, and allegations of anti union blacklisting.
Unite’s senior legal counsel, Oliver Segal KC, has briefed councillors directly. Some individual claims, he has warned, could cost tens of thousands of pounds each.
A negotiated settlement could involve the withdrawal of many of these claims. Instead, the council is allowing legal risk to accumulate month by month, at public expense.
Commissioners, Oversight, and Responsibility
Birmingham City Council is under commissioners. Extraordinary spending does not happen without oversight. An additional £1.1 million per month on agency labour does not go unnoticed.
Someone authorises it. Someone approves its continuation. Someone has decided this is preferable to settlement.
This is not drift. It is a course of action.
Labour Cannot Pretend This Is Local
Nor can Labour pretend this is someone else’s problem.
Labour is the governing party nationally. It has been for a year. What happens in Birmingham happens on its watch. A Labour run council accused of illegal strike breaking, intimidation, and runaway public spending is not a local inconvenience. It is a national political issue.
Which brings us to the unavoidable question of leadership.
Sam Donoghue, Labour’s regional organiser, will be tasked with helping to deliver elections in the West Midlands next May. Does he believe that a prolonged, highly visible dispute in Europe’s largest local authority, now accompanied by allegations of illegal strike breaking, intimidation, and spiralling public cost, is electorally harmless?
Or is silence now the chosen strategy while candidates are left to face the consequences on the doorstep.
Because these are not abstract risks. Voters will ask direct questions. Why is a Labour council accused of strike breaking? Why is public money being spent at what appears to be any cost to defeat a workforce rather than resolve a dispute? Why are lucrative commercial waste contracts being lost? And why, under a Labour government, do workers and agency staff say they feel pressured, sidelined, and ignored?
What This Now Says About Labour
This is where the issue cuts deepest.
Labour was founded by the trade union movement to protect working people from precisely this kind of treatment. To stop coercion replacing negotiation. To prevent power being exercised without accountability. The clue, as ever, is in the name.
Yet in Birmingham, a Labour run council under a Labour government now stands accused of spending millions of pounds to prolong a dispute, running down parts of its own service, and attempting to outlast its workforce rather than settle with it.
This is not just a failure of industrial relations. It is a failure of political identity.
The Unite letter seen by GRIT shows that councillors know what is happening. They know the costs. They know the risks. They know the allegations. What they have yet to explain is why a party founded to represent labour now appears willing to spend whatever it takes to defeat it.
That is the question Birmingham’s voters will be asking next May.
And it is one Labour can no longer afford to answer with silence.