Unite has announced it has suspended Angela Rayner from her membership of the union, in an escalating row over the long-running bin strikes in Birmingham.
The deputy prime minister has been urging striking bin workers to accept a deal to end the dispute tabled by the Labour-run city council.
In an emergency motion at its conference in Brighton, the union said it would also re-examine its relationship with Labour if the council makes any of its members redundant.
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A spokesperson for Rayner said she is no longer a member of the union - although Unite is insisting that she is on its membership system.Unite is affiliated to Labour, and is the party’s biggest union funder.
It did not donate to the party’s election campaign last year, but made donations worth £10,000 towards Rayner’s campaign, according to her register of interests.
Members of the union walked out in January over plans to downgrade some roles as part of the city council’s attempts to sort out its equal pay liabilities.
An all-out indefinite strike was announced in March, and a deal to end industrial action has not yet been reached.
They also suspended Birmingham Council leader John Cotton.
Yeah true. But you can apply that logic the other way around too. There’s massive public inconvenience and health issues living in a city that doesn’t have waste services functioning so the Unions are using that to force the government’s hand. Give us what we want or the city suffers.
I don’t think either approach is working, do you?
This is disengenuous when the other side of the argument is “we dictate the terms of your work”. Working isn’t slavery, it’s voluntary, and has to be agreed by both parties. It isn’t “give us what we want or the city suffers”, it’s “give us a fair deal or we stop working”.
In this kind of negotiation nothing “works” until the negotiations are concluded.
You can only really apply it the other way around.
If you totally ignore 15 years of austerity politics. Plus huge cost of living rises.
Unfortunately that shit did happen. As such all council paid utility workers have are seriously under paid and over worked.
So no in no way shape or form is she correct to blame the workers. As this is clearly what she is doing. As such yes the Union is entirely correct to indicate her membership is unwelcome.
The shit in Birmingham is the direct result of 15 year of governments refusing to fund the cost of maintaining our infestucture/staffing. And the fact Birmingham is our so called second city. With the 2nd greatest costs of all staffing and inferstructure. But without the funding protection London gains. Is why the funding has hit that location first. Other cities will follow if this shitty attitude to service funding continues.
I don’t disagree that austerity hasn’t been extremely difficult for people. However how does that explain other cities not facing the same issues Birmingham is facing? Manchester doesn’t have the same waste problem. Newcastle doesn’t have the same problem. Neither does Liverpool. Neither does Edinburgh. Neither does Cardiff. Have these places not suffered austerity? What is unique about Birmingham that it can’t clean it’s streets? And is Rayner not right in pointing out that, even if there are differences regionally, it can’t be this difficult to come to an agreement to keep your city clean.