Strike, Structure and the Sneaky Second Fleet ?

When Councillor Ewan Mackey asked whether strike law was being respected, did the answer lay in a December report: a parallel fleet approved to sit outside strike law?

Birmingham is in the middle of a bin strike. I mention that just in case you have been away from Britain for the last year or so.

Refuse workers are on industrial action. Recycling has been disrupted. General waste has struggled in places. Residents are frustrated. The unions say jobs and grading are at stake. The Council says reform is necessary.

In February, Councillor Ewan Mackey asked a direct question during a council meeting.

He referred to a line in the Cabinet papers which stated:

“Agency staff were reduced in line with this saving but then re-hired to deal with the impact of Industrial Action.”

Given ongoing allegations of unlawful strikebreaking, Mackey sought clarification on whether the Council’s approach complied with Regulation 7.

The question was put on the record.

It was not substantively answered.

That prompted a closer look at the paperwork.

What that search uncovered was not in February’s minutes.

It was in a Cabinet report from 9 December 2025.

The December Decision

The document is titled Implementation of the Waste Transformation Programme, considered by Cabinet on 9 December 2025 by Birmingham City Council.

Buried inside are three passages that matter.

First, the Council states clearly:

“Regulation 7 … means it would be an offence for an employment agency to engage workers to undertake work being carried out by striking staff.”

In plain English: agency workers cannot lawfully be used to replace striking refuse crews.

That is the boundary.

Second, Cabinet approved what is known as Option 2. That option provides that if industrial action continues, an alternative separate workforce for food waste may be established.

Third, the report explains that any such service must be:

“separate … run by different managers, with different vehicles and in no way work which would have been covered by those on strike.”

Different managers.

Different vehicles.

Completely separate.

The wording is deliberate.

It is designed to sit outside Regulation 7.

Why This Matters Now

This was agreed in December.

But the strike has not gone away.

Which means the authority to create a separate, legally insulated food waste workforce remains live.

And that gives fresh weight to Mackey’s unanswered question.

The Food Waste Question

Let us be fair.

Separate weekly food waste collection is required under national recycling rules. Councils must introduce it.

No one disputes that.

But here is what residents see.

Recycling disrupted.

General waste inconsistent.

Industrial action ongoing.

And yet the most careful legal drafting in the Cabinet papers concerns the creation of a separate food waste service that avoids falling foul of Regulation 7.

No resident can walk into a police station and demand arrests because their compost caddy was not emptied. Waste duties are enforced through complaints, ombudsmen and, if necessary, judicial review. Not through handcuffs.

So why, in the middle of a live strike, is the Council’s most detailed legal precision devoted to insulating a new service?

The timing invites scrutiny.

A Truck Is Still a Truck

The Council will say, correctly, that the new workforce is confined to food waste.

On paper, that is so.

But waste services are practical systems.

They are trucks.

They are lifting gear.

They are depots.

They are route maps.

A refuse lorry does not become fundamentally different because it is assigned to peelings. It still drives the same streets. It still lifts bins. It still removes waste.

Once a new fleet and workforce are established, overall capacity increases.

More crews.

More vehicles.

More flexibility.

The legal boundary is substitution. The physical capability is broader.

Let us be blunt. Build a second fleet and you reduce your dependence on the first. Whether that new capacity is ever directed beyond its original scope is a matter of instruction, not engineering. And in a live strike, instructions matter.

And should conditions deteriorate to the point where public health concerns are invoked, the pressure to deploy whatever capacity exists would increase. That may never happen. But once the machinery exists, so does the option.

If Settlement Was Close

If a deal were around the corner, would this much effort be going into building a separate structure?

If negotiations were about to succeed, would management diagrams and fleet allocation be the focus?

When you read the December report, you do not see urgency about talks.

You see preparation.

You see contingency.

You see resilience.

That does not prove bad faith.

But it does suggest the Council is preparing for endurance as much as for agreement.

The Westminster Bridge

Separately, Ayoub Khan, MP for Perry Barr, raised the wider dispute with Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions. The Prime Minister said “everything” was being done to resolve the situation.

Khan occupies a rare position. He speaks in Parliament about resolving the strike. He also sits in Birmingham’s council chamber.

The rhetoric may be national.

But the structural decisions are local.

The Labour Question

Birmingham is run by Labour.

Labour’s history is rooted in organised labour.

And here we have a Labour Cabinet acknowledging the protection around strike action and setting out how to design a service beyond it.

This may be entirely lawful.

But politics is not only about legality. It is about instinct.

And the instinct of a party born from organised labour will be judged not only by what it is permitted to do, but by what it chooses to do.

Is this negotiation?

Or insulation?

The Arithmetic in the Chamber

Birmingham operates under a Leader and Cabinet model. Executive decisions sit with Cabinet, which is Labour-led.

But Labour no longer commands automatic control of the Full Council chamber.

The numbers have shifted. Former Labour councillors now sit outside the group. Opposition and independent members carry real weight. No single bloc holds unchallenged dominance.

Cabinet may authorise policy. But Cabinet does not operate in a political vacuum. Full Council controls the broader policy framework and the political authority that underpins implementation.

If councillors from across the chamber were to align, they could:

• Refer the matter back for reconsideration

• Amend the enabling policy framework

• Constrain implementation through budgetary control

• Pass a motion requiring that activation be deferred

In practical terms, if there is political will, implementation can be paused.

That includes Ayoub Khan, who sits in that chamber as well as in Westminster.

The vote is local.

The authority is local.

The responsibility is local.

The Simple Choice

The December Cabinet decision exists.

The February question from Ewan Mackey remains unanswered.

The strike continues.

Full Council could pass a simple resolution:

That the activation of the separate food waste service be deferred until the current industrial dispute is settled.

Not scrapped.

Not cancelled.

Paused.

Settle first.

Launch later.

If councillors believe this rollout has nothing to do with strike leverage, they should have no objection to that sequencing.

If they resist even that modest safeguard, residents are entitled to ask why.

No grand accusations are required.

Just clarity.

And sometimes the most powerful political act is not drafting a workaround.

It is deciding when to use it.