Rats, rotting waste as rubbish row blights UK’s city

On a normal day in an ordinary English street there would be nothing special about the arrival of a bin lorry. But in Birmingham, the UK’s second city, a rare garbage truck visit brings crowds of people rushing into the road, their arms full of rubbish. Residents are desperately trying to get rid of an estimated 17,000 tonnes of trash that has piled up since refuse workers ramped up a strike last month.

Now, as bin bags swelter in the spring sun and rats, foxes, and cats claw through mounting heaps of litter, many people in Birmingham feel the city has reached breaking point. Four weeks in, the city council has declared a “major incident,” the prime minister has had to defend the government’s response in parliament, and residents say their problems are worsening by the day.

“There was a bin fire on the end of our street the other night,” said Abel Mihai, 23, who lives in the Saltley area of the city where mounds of ripening rubbish have attracted worms, maggots and vermin. “It’s scary — I’m worried for my kids,” he said, adding the pest-infested piles were affecting his three-year-old son’s health. “Every time he goes out the back he vomits from the smell,” Mihai said.

“We need to do something about it,” his eight-year-old daughter Vanessa told AFP. “It’s not good.” At the centre of the dispute is a pay row between the cash-strapped city council and refuse workers belonging to the Unite union, which says some staff employed by the council stand to lose £8,000 ($10,400) per year under a planned restructuring of the refuse service.

The quarrel also plays into wider problems in British society — from stretched local council funding to sweeping inequality. Residents in poorer areas of the city in England’s Midlands region told AFP they felt neglected, and questioned whether the trouble would have spiralled in wealthier parts of the country. City Councillor Mohammed Idrees said he was also worried about Birmingham’s reputation.

The city of over a million people is known for its industrial heritage and rich multicultural makeup — but he said the strike was “creating a very bad image throughout the world.”

The council has disputed the union’s account of the restructure and insists it has “made a fair and reasonable offer” to workers. But at a union picket line outside a city waste depot, refuse collectors told AFP they felt insulted by the changes, which they said would amount to a hefty pay cut for hundreds of workers.

Wayne Bishop, a 59-year-old driver and union member, said he would lose his position under the shake-up and be around £600 per month worse-off. He said the job was gruelling work and deserved to be paid fairly.

“We can’t afford that for our toil,” he said. “We go out all weathers, we was out in Covid, we just can’t afford to lose that with the cost of living going up.”

The industrial action has been rumbling on since January, but increased to an all-out strike on March 11. It’s now begun to cause a political stink for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Confronted by the opposition in parliament on Wednesday, he admitted the situation in Birmingham was “completely unacceptable” — but insisted his government would provide extra support and stood by the council, which is run by Starmer’s Labour party. Residents are tired of waiting though, and some have taken matters into their own hands.

The special waste truck visit on the street in Saltley on Wednesday was arranged by members of a community centre who contacted a local councillor for assistance. Organiser Hubaish Mohammed, 26, said the Hutton Hall group had helped hundreds of people lug their rubbish to the temporary collection site, where residents load their waste onto trucks staffed by non-striking workers.

Staff said they’d helped collect around 45 tonnes of waste in a single day. “It’s been a graft but we’re here to look after the community,” Mohammed said. “We had to take the initiative.”