By Professor John Bryson
Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham
Narratives or stories that are told of a place really matter. They influence resident perceptions of a place and also those who are making investment decisions that could result in job creation opportunities. One Dublin narrative is constructed around the phase “Dear old Dirty Dublin”. This strapline is blamed on James Joyce who used the expression “Dear Dirty Dublin” on several occasions. For Dublin, this phase goes back to medieval times when citizens dumped their excrement, and other waste, in the River Liffey.
Birmingham could now be known as Dear Old Dirty Birmingham as this city has developed a reputation for being a city of bin strikes. In June 2017, members of the Unite trade union involved in the city’s waste collection went on strike in a dispute over job losses. This strike was called as the union claimed that restructuring plans threatened jobs. This strike action was suspended in August 2017. There was another strike led by Unite in February 2019 with those collecting bins working to rule and with walkouts. This strike action was suspended on 15 March 2019. There is then the current 2025 bin strike that commenced on 11 March 2025. Birmingham has become the bin strike capital of the UK.
Birmingham is now associated not with positive news stories of how wonderful the city is as a place to live and work, but rather as a city known for rat parties, mounds of decaying rubbish and an aroma of decay. On some streets the smell is so bad that residents cannot open their windows. Some lucky households have had their bins collected only to then experience fly tipping.
Waste collection services are a critical public service. Part of this involves discouraging littering and fly tipping and encouraging residents to take pride in Birmingham as a place to live and work. Last week I observed litter picking on one of the dual carriageways that connects Birmingham with the motorway. Bags of litter had been collected, but then the littering continued. Too many Birmingham streets, and other public places, are saturated with litter. Every piece of litter dropped erodes the quality of a city’s public realm and also is potentially a cost to the local authority. It is time for Birmingham and all UK towns and cities to take litter seriously.
The bin strike highlights the amount of waste that urban residents can accumulate. All city residents and employers should be waste aware and seek to minimise the amount of waste that they produce. However, it is exceedingly difficult not to produce waste and it is far too easy to engage in littering and fly tipping.
There are many ways of reading Birmingham’s latest bin strike. Here are three readings.
First, this is a strike between the Unite union and Birmingham City Council with Unite working to protect the interests of its members. The 2025 bin dispute seems to revolve around protecting the interests of 72 employees. The UK has a major public service productivity problem and part of this problem comes from the interventions of trade unions. Trade unions dislike employers who attempt job restructuring which is intended to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Thus, there is a tension between Unite’s concern with protecting the interests of 72 union members with Birmingham City Council’s attempt to restructure the provision of waste services across the city.
Second, Birmingham City Council is controlled by elected councillors who represent the interests of their electorate. The councillors and their officials have to make decisions regarding the allocation of revenue that comes from tax payers. All Birmingham’s bin strikes come from decisions made by elected councillors trying to represent the interests of their constituents. Unite is seeking to overturn these decisions. This is an important point as yesterday was 1 April, and on this day Council Tax in Birmingham went up by 7.49%. This is a stonking increase. The size of this increase is partly explained by the tensions that exist between the trade unions and Birmingham’s elected councillors.
Third, Birmingham is now the bin strike capital of the UK. It is absolutely essential that the 2025 bin strike is Birmingham’s last such strike. The bin strike has many negative impacts. On the one hand, there are all the negatives that come from an accumulation of over 17,000 tons of rubbish across the city. There are major health implications. On the other hand, the bin strike will be influencing decisionmakers and this includes companies deciding to invest in the city to create new jobs. Some of this investment might go to other cities given Birmingham’s reputation for bin strikes. Who wants to live in a city with a long history of bin strikes?
Birmingham has declared that the ongoing bin strike is a major incident. This declaration means that the council can increase its street cleaning operations and fly-tipping removal by deploying 35 additional vehicles and crew. This declaration is not a solution to the strike but is an attempt to reduce some of the impacts.
Overall, it is important to appreciate that these bin strikes are the outcome of an ongoing disagreement between Unite, and its members, and Birmingham’s elected councillors. Unite claims that its member’s are being disadvantaged, but the real losers are all who live and work in Birmingham. Birmingham City Council must develop and implement a permanent solution to the city’s waste collection problem. There is a real danger that a short-term solution is agreed with Unite and that all living in Birmingham can look forward to further bin strikes.
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Birmingham.