Rats, rubbish and recrimination: Metro revisits Birmingham as bin strikes enter second year

Walking past rows of bin bags in Birmingham is inevitably going to trigger a bout of déjà vu.

The West Midlands city has been plagued by rubbish, rats and recrimination since bin workers began an all-out strike a year ago today.

There is no end in sight to the paralysis, with both sides blaming each other for refusing to reach an agreement.

Metro spoke to union workers, litter pickers, councillors and locals on how 365 days of strikes has wrecked havoc made Birmingham ‘world-famous’ for rats and garbage.

At the beginning of the strikes last year, it took just weeks for 21,000 tonnes of rubbish to pile up on the roads and for stories of monster rats to emerge.

In the weeks that followed, the council turned to agency workers to try get a grip of the crisis, while posh suburbs forked out for private waste collection to clear the streets.

But head out to some neighbourhoods, like Small Heath and Sparkhill, and it is evident that waste collection problems still grip parts of Birmingham.

Mounds of bin bags cover street paths, while fly-tipping is commonplace.

Small Heath local Mohammed Rahman, who lives opposite a pile of dumped trash, said rats colonise the roads at night.

He told Metro: ‘People are dumping bin bags all across the road. It is not right. We cannot live like this.’

Mr Rahman is livid that his council tax is set to rise by 4.99% in April, even though the strikes are not over and recycling has not been collected for an entire year.

‘They should sort this problem,’ he added. ‘They should compromise with the binmen.’

A few paces away was Mohammed Saber, who was picking up stray litter off the curb.

Despite the council worker’s best efforts, he’s unable to tackle the root cause of the mess: an overflowing bin surrounded by dumped black bags.

Mr Saber told Metro: ‘I cannot even get to that bin. I am trying to litter pick and it is a no-win situation. A lot of people chuck bags that are open.

‘I know where the rats are. It is really bad. The problem has gone into the gutter.’

The litter picker said the issue with fly tipping and bin bags won’t go away ‘until the strikes are over’.

Both Mr Rahman and Mr Saber begged the bin workers and Birmingham council to reach a deal so that their areas can be cleared up.

The dispute can be traced back to 2012, when Birmingham council lost a landmark equal pay claim over pay workers in female-dominated sectors.

The city went bust more than a decade later after realising the cost of that ruling would be up to £760million.

In January 2025, Birmingham announced they were axing the waste and recycling collection officer role (WCRO) in fear that the position – which no other council has – would make the authority liable to another equal pay claim.

That announcement caused all hell to break loose.

Unite the Union, which represents bin workers in the city, claims the resulting restructure will mean scores of their members will lose up to £8,000.

After a series of one-day strikes at the beginning of last year, the union began an all-out strike against the proposals on 11 March last year.

Wendy Yarnold has been on the picket line for the entire dispute.

The grandparent was an WCRO who now faces an £8,000 pay cut, something she says is unaffordable.

The bin worker of ten years told Metro: ‘To lose £8,000 a year is extortionate.

‘My council rent is going up again and my council tax is going up again too. No one can afford a pay cut.

‘The cost of food and everything is going up. We haven’t asked for a pay rise we have just asked to keep our money. I would lose my home.’

Striking workers are receiving £70 a day from the Unite strike fund, leaving many struggling to stay afloat.

Ms Yarnold says Christmas was ‘cancelled’ in her house last year due to her financial struggles.

She said: ‘I am depressed. I am fed up. The kids are phoning me now saying “Have you got enough money, mum?”

‘We want to go back to work. It is a fantastic job.’

Unite said a ‘ballpark’ deal was reached in talks with council officials in July last year but was later withdrawn, which the council denies.

The union claims government-appointed commissioners blocked the agreement, which included one-off compensation payments of between £14,000 and £20,000 per worker.

The council said it had been forced to walk away from talks because it had hit the ‘limit’ of what itcould offer.

Matthew Reid, 49, a Unite convener, said the council has refused to rejoin the talks ever since.

The bin lorry driver – not a WRCO – claims he stands to lose £6,000 after his role was ‘deleted’ and downgraded.

He told Metro: ‘It is frustrating. We feel let down by the council and the Labour government.

‘A Labour council cannot negotiate with a trade union to get a fair and reasonable result.

‘We just want that compensation, we cannot afford to lose £8000 just because we don’t fit in a box that they want us to fit in.’

The council say they have not ‘fire and rehired’. They are also adamant that the amount of money Unite is demanding is ‘unjustifiable’ and would risk an equal pay claim.

However, the union says they have their own legal advice which shows that isn’t the case.

Unite members have voted to extend their mandate for industrial action into September this year and are prepared to carry on past then.

Mr Reid gathers every morning with dozens fellow striking workers to protest outside one of Birmingham’s many depots and watch on as agency workers come do their jobs.

While the says those workers are able to maintain a ‘semblance of a service’, the smaller number of staff means collections can be sporadic.

The Unite activist added: ‘We all get highs and lows. We are all struggling financially but we are all supporting each other.

‘We have said we are willing to speak. Even if there is nothing to talk about, we can’t understand why they don’t want to talk.’

The year of industrial action has already cost the council £14.6million, spent on street cleansing, security costs and additional support to tackle the waste.

The next phase of the crisis will be shaped by the looming local elections in the city in May.

Conservative opposition leader Robert Alden has his eyes on winning control of the council off the backs of angry residents fuming at the messy streets.

Talking a year after Metro first met him to discuss the strikes, he said: ‘We have seen a complete lack of leadership from the council.

‘While they must not set up another equal pay crisis, they should at least meet to negotiate so they can try and bring a resolution to a bin strike.’

The Tory councillor promised to re-start negotiations but said he could not set out his negotiating position because he had not seen the legal advice shown to the council.

He also claimed that locals were ‘highly suspicious’ of the council’s plans to restart recycling collections in June, even if the strikes aren’t resolved.

Most damning of all was his assessment of how the bin strikes have affected Birmingham’s reputation, just a few years after the city successfully hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2022.

Mr Alden said: ‘Birmingham is known around the world for rats and rubbish.’

In a moment of cross-party consensus, Labour MP Preet Gill agreed the city’s reputation had taken a hit when the build-up of bin bags and ‘vermin’ led to fears for public health last summer.

She said the situation has now improved and that ‘people’s waste is being collected every week’.

The Birmingham Edgbaston MP called for both sides ‘to get back around the table to bring this to an end’ after one year.

She added: ‘It is just unbelievable. Both sides need to have the people of Birmingham at the forefront of their mind.’

Ms Gill was confident that the waste collection crisis would not hurt Labour’s support in the May elections.

She said: ‘The citizens of Birmingham are fed up. They’re not trying to pick the side, because when they understand what the dispute is about they get it from the council’s perspective.

‘They have seen what the equal pay liability has done to the council. The citizens of Birmingham just want this to be brought to an end.’

Cllr Majid Mahmood, cabinet member for environment and transport, said in a statement: ‘It is immensely frustrating for the residents of Birmingham that the strike has not been resolved.

‘We have invited Unite on multiple occasions to make a proposal to end the strike, which we would fully and carefully consider, but they have declined to do so thus far. They have also rejected our fair and reasonable offers.

‘All of the 170 former WRCOs were successfully redeployed or elected to take VR.

‘Of the 144 Driver/Team Leaders, the majority have agreed to accept the new role with the standard 6 months’ pay protection, with others taking voluntary redundancy or other alternative roles within the service.

‘Given this it is hard to understand why the strike is continuing.

‘Despite this, we are driving forward our service improvements, set to start rolling out in June whether or not the industrial action continues.

‘My message to those still taking action is simple: come back to work, I want you to be part of this new, improved service.’

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