{"id":23882,"date":"2017-09-04T10:30:33","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T09:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=23882"},"modified":"2017-09-04T10:30:33","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T09:30:33","slug":"birmingham-bin-strike-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2017\/09\/04\/birmingham-bin-strike-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham Bin Strike Back On"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Birmingham\u2019s bin workers have returned to the picket lines with the strike back on following the falling through of a deal between Union and the council.<\/h2>\n<p>The seven-week strike was suspended on 16<sup>th<\/sup> August after an initial agreement was made between the two parties.<\/p>\n<p>A meeting was due to take place on Friday 1<sup>st<\/sup> September but the council went back on agreement, according to Unite, saying the meeting would no longer be taking place.<\/p>\n<p>Unite has now warned that the action could continue until the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>The council\u2019s action had &#8220;made it a certainty that the people of Birmingham will suffer this chaos and disruption and rubbish on their streets for the rest of 2017&#8221;, according to Unite\u2019s Howard Beckett.<\/p>\n<p>Council leader John Clancy, however, claims that no deal had been fully agreed with the group.<\/p>\n<p>The dispute, which initially saw strike action start on 30<sup>th<\/sup> June, revolved around restructuring plans which Birmingham City Council say will modernise the service and save \u00a35 million a year. Unite, however, argue that the plans will threaten the jobs of more than 120 refuse collectors.<\/p>\n<p>A council report published last week warned of the financial cost of a deal struck with Unite, branding it \u201cunaffordable\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, in a decision which Mr. Beckett described as \u201coutrageous industrial sabotage\u201d, the council said it was issuing redundancy notices to certain grade three workers &#8220;in order to protect its legal and financial position&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Strike action was prompted, as a result, to resume from Friday morning. Three-hour stoppages spaced across shifts are planned, taking place daily at 07.00, 10.30 and 13.00 BST.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Beckett said, &#8220;I reached a deal with John Clancy and Acas on 15 August. That deal was publicised by Acas on the 16 August after my members authorised it and suspended industrial action.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was told by John Clancy, and have a text communication from him, that the cabinet approved the deal on the 21 August, yet I have a statement yesterday, and I haven&#8217;t heard from John Clancy, that there&#8217;s this sudden reversal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Council leader John Clancy disagreed, saying, &#8220;Deal or no deal &#8211; there was no deal. My cabinet and I came together with a negotiating position to try to see what we could do to go that extra mile to get a negotiated solution.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If there had been a deal to end the dispute, the strike would have ended, it wasn&#8217;t, it was suspended.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, there was no deal, there was an agreement in principle to talk at Acas and my cabinet and I agreed some heads of terms that would enable us to get into Acas to talk, there has been no deal concluded with Unite.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Unite have said there was a deal for their own purposes. There was never a deal,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Birmingham\u2019s bin workers have returned to the picket lines with the strike back on following the falling through of a deal between Union and the council. The seven-week strike was suspended on 16th August after an initial agreement was made between the two parties. A meeting was due to take place on Friday 1st September [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":23883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}