Collecting the bins

The ongoing Birmingham bin strikes have been unusually hard to solve because they sit at the intersection of local politics, finances, and union relations. The council has faced years of budget pressures, partly due to equal pay liabilities costing hundreds of millions.

That has meant management has very little flexibility in negotiations. Even small concessions on pay or grading have big ripple effects, because they might set precedents for other workers’ claims. Workers feel singled out, while the council insists it’s about affordability and fairness across departments.

Bin strikes are very visible and immediately affect residents. The piles of rubbish create huge pressure, but also make each side wary of losing face.

Perhaps the most important factor is that years of dispute have poisoned relations between management and unions. Even when partial agreements were reached, each side accused the other of bad faith. So, the dispute isn’t just about pay or working conditions. It’s tangled up with Birmingham’s financial crisis, legal constraints, political blame games, and years of mistrust, all of which make compromise very hard.

Could it be solved by contracting out bin collection to private companies - with penalty clauses for non-performance?

This is exactly what some councils have done when faced with prolonged disputes. Private companies can be bound by performance contracts, and failure to collect bins could trigger financial penalties.  A private operator could be made legally responsible for collections, with penalties if they miss targets such as missed bins, delayed rounds, or customer complaints.

The dispute shifts from council–union to company–union, removing the council from being the direct employer. TUPE rules (Transfer of Undertakings) would motivate the private firms to hire new employees, rather than having to take on current council workers at existing pay and conditions.

According to a report from the Institute for Government, waste collection is one of the ‘support services’ where outsourcing has shown more consistent success in terms of cost savings and efficiency compared to more complex services. The rationale is that waste collection is relatively easier to define in measurable terms (routes, bins, missed collections) compared to, say, social care or health services.

In Birmingham, contract design would have to be exceptionally rigorous. To avoid common pitfalls, Birmingham would need realistic but strict key performance indicators such as missed collections, response times and customer complaints.

The contract structure would have to balance service reliability, financial discipline, and labour relations stability. It would need to avoid the ‘hollow contract’ problem (where councils hand over responsibility but don’t monitor it), while also preventing contractors from gaming the system or starving hard-to-serve areas.

But overall, yes it could be done, and it could solve an ongoing problem that has driven many Birmingham residents to despair, and free them from the stench and the rats that currently proliferate.

Madsen Pirie