When looking at the state of the city, it’s impossible to ignore this summer’s Great Brighton Bin Strike. Though hardly the Winter Of Discontent (ask your dad), it was pretty grim for a while and people were FURIOUS, although they often weren’t really sure who with. That’s partly because you couldn’t seem to get a straight word out of anyone. So what actually happened, and whose fault was it? Like most strikes it wasn’t nearly as clear-cut as the mainstream media wanted to suggest.
Let’s start with some facts. Following a pay dispute with their Brighton And Hove City Council employers, Cityclean workers – who include our refuse collectors and streetcleaners – walked out twice this summer. After two days in May, and the infamous week in June, we’ve just narrowly averted round three in August. When polled by their GMB union late last month, 60% of Cityclean workers decided to accept a revised pay offer from the council, bringing the strained situation to an end.
As the bin strike unfolded, many residents seemed unsure what was happening as they tried to make sense of conflicting or incomplete information from the council, local and national media and the GMB. Even now things are officially over it’s still not exactly clear to people whether the bin men were being greedy or the council were being tight. Probably it wasn’t either, but with nearly no information, especially from the council, it was hard to tell. Part of the problem was that the council were very cautious about what information they could legally release in a pay dispute.
Basically, 2013 has seen our Green led council modernising its pay structures (at present a hodge-podge of conflicting scales and contracts inherited from the 1997 amalgamation of the old Brighton and Hove Borough Councils). While insisting the measures are about simplifying these structures and ensuring equal pay for equal work, rather than needing to save money, one area marked for modernisation is the allowances and expenses paid to staff above their usual wages.
This is why some Cityclean workers, in the worst-case scenarios, could have lost up to £4000 per year, with many more facing losing a lesser amount. Although the council pledges to pay all its workers a Living Wage above the National Minimum Wage, Cityclean workers are often at the lower end of the pay scale and see the cuts in allowances and expenses as having a real, detrimental effect to their income.
What was the big hurry? Well, the payments needed to be brought into line with equalities legislation. Previous administrations (both Tory and Labour led councils) had swerved the issue, knowing that it was going to be a painful process, and a very unpopular one. Unfortunately for the Greens it could be put off no longer. There are national legal cases coming up in October and if the pay structures weren’t found to be equal here then Brighton was in for a huge shitstorm. How big? Well, when Birmingham City Council got busted on the same issue they were liable for millions and had to sell the NEC. It’s not exaggerating to suggest Brighton And Hove could have gone bankrupt.
It’s important to remember that no one likes going out on strike. Striking workers don’t get paid while they’re not doing their job, and the unpleasant impact of refuse left on the streets affects them as much as anyone else. Withholding their labour demonstrates very quickly just how important a job Cityclean workers do in Brighton.
So after all that, who was to blame? Essentially no one. It was a bunch of put-upon people – the council and the Cityclean workers – desperately trying to sort out a shitty situation. But what is important is that a group of people who felt that they were getting shafted stood up for themselves and ended up with a solution that they were happy with. And that’s what we should learn from this.
Words By Stuart Hugget & James Kendall
Illustration by Chloe Batchelor
