Call for council leader to quit in bin strikes row
Talks broke down on Wednesday with the council saying it was "walking away", after conciliation service Acas had started mediating negotiations in May.
Leader John Cotton said the authority had "sought to be reasonable and flexible but we have reached the absolute limit of what we can offer".
Unite's national lead officer Onay Kasab said on Thursday: "The way his council under his leadership has mishandled this dispute and with yesterday's appalling announcement, as a Labour councillor he really needs to be considering his position."
Why are Birmingham bin workers on strike?
In response, a spokesperson for the city council did not comment on calls for Cotton to consider his position but said they would be talking to staff and unions about their next steps.
The union walked out on strike after claiming 170 workers would face losing up to £8,000 a year due to the council's decision to remove Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) roles.
Mountains of rubbish have been seen across the city at points during the strikes, since bin collection workers walked out in January, with an all-out strike going on since March.
On Wednesday, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham repeated earlier claims that the council had resorted to a "fire and rehire" strategy.
Accusing the council of a "shambolic" mishandling of the dispute, including a "daft" attempt to negotiate via a statement to the media, Mr Kasab said on Thursday of Cotton: "I think he really has to seriously consider his position."
The national lead officer also stated there had "not been numerous offers that the union has turned down".
"The question to the council is how do redundancies and cuts to people's pay improve services," he added.
"That's the question that John Cotton really has to answer now."
The council leader said on Wednesday that the authority had "now run out of time", after negotiating in good faith.
Cotton added "unfortunately Unite has rejected all offers so we must now press ahead to both address our equal pay risk and make much needed improvements to the waste service".
The Labour-run council would communicate with staff and unions as to its next steps, with voluntary redundancy remaining on the table alongside opportunities for training and redeployment, the leader said.
Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Bin lorry drivers face axe as strike talks fail
No end in sight for bin strike after six months
Union denies 'targeting' school linked to bins boss
Bin collections not back to normal - politicians
Conciliation talks no miracle cure - ex Acas chief
Birmingham City Council
Unite
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
‘A black hole': Attorneys say they still can't reach clients in Alligator Alcatraz
One week after the first detainees began arriving at the Florida-run detention center for migrants in the Everglades, Katie Blankenship, a Miami immigration attorney, showed up at the gates of Alligator Alcatraz with a list of five names and a demand: let me in to see them. She waited two and a half hours, only to be told to put her name on a list and to wait between 24 and 48 hours for a call back. 'These folks have due process and the right to counsel,' Blankenship told the employee manning the gate on July 10. 'They cannot be denied counsel for this long and we cannot have a black hole of information where we do not know how to contact clients.' That call has yet to come. Nearly two weeks since the site opened, lawyers say Florida's pop-up detention facility has been something of a black box, with detainees going in and little information coming out, except for outgoing calls from the facility. Detainees taken to the seized county property in the Big Cypress National Preserve fall out of a federal immigration database created to help families and lawyers locate migrants who are in custody. Attorneys have struggled to schedule legal visitations with their clients, despite the state's public assurances that they can be set up. Lawyers say it's not even clear where to file legal briefs due to muddiness about whether detainees are in the custody of the state or federal government, which has claimed the DeSantis administration has final say on who is brought to the site. The Herald/Times spoke with seven attorneys who have clients at the facility. They said the need for transparency and legal access is urgent, as the state says detainees are sent to the site to be processed and be quickly deported from an on-site airstrip. But so far, lawyers are having trouble finding phone numbers and emails associated with the site — at least ones that lead to responses. 'I've called, I've emailed everybody and their grandmother and their grandmother's sister. Nobody emails you back and nobody calls you back,' Atara Eig, a seasoned immigration attorney based in Miami, said in an interview Monday. Stephanie Hartman, a spokeswoman with the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which is overseeing operations at Alligator Alcatraz, said in an email that detainees have 'regular access to phone and video calls with their attorneys and family members upon request.' 'These are federal detainees held in a state facility, and therefore, attorneys should follow their normal representation procedures as they have full access to their clients,' Hartman said. 'The purpose of the facility is to stage illegal immigrants for deportation, as has been repeatedly stated.' Attorneys of detainees can email, legal@ to schedule appointments, Hartman said. On Sunday afternoon – a week and a half after the first detainees arrived – one attorney emailed that address and an automated reply said, in part: 'Your message wasn't delivered because the recipient's email provider rejected it.' A few hours later, the attorney sent another email to the same address, and received a response Monday with a form to fill out to set up a legal visitation. The visit hasn't happened yet. She was scheduled to have a bond hearing for her client Tuesday afternoon and had not been able to prepare him as of Tuesday morning. The Herald/Times emailed the address on Monday afternoon and about two hours later received the following message: 'As we continue to develop and expand direct legal access resources at the facility, please be assured that we are working diligently to ensure timely, secure, and reliable attorney-client communication. We recognize the importance of these interactions and are committed to continuously improving the systems that support them. We sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding as we enhance our processes to better serve both legal counsel and the individuals in our care.' To date, it is unclear whether any family members or attorneys have been able to visit detainees in person. When asked how many visitations had been approved as of Monday, Hartman did not respond. Scrambling to locate and represent Some attorneys said that while they experienced delays, they have seen some progress, at least when it comes to scheduling bond hearings to try to get their clients out of the detention center in the Everglades. Magdalena Cuprys says she has three clients at the state facility. In the case of one of her clients – a Honduran man with a pending asylum application as a victim of human trafficking — Cuprys said she was able to land a bond hearing. But she remains puzzled by his detention. She said her client was originally held at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection building in Dania Beach for about a week after he was stopped at a truck weigh station by Florida Highway Patrol officers on June 25. He has a valid drivers' license, Cuprys said. She still doesn't know why he was detained that day. The Honduran man called her when he was stopped and an FHP officer took the phone and told her that anyone who 'appears Hispanic' needs to be sent to CBP to have their license verified, she said. Cuprys didn't name her client publicly, but the Herald/Times was able to independently confirm he is a detainee at the facility. The Florida Highway Patrol could not immediately be reached for comment. Officers told Cuprys her client would eventually be transferred to Krome detention center, so she prepped to file for his bond there. Then she found out from his family that he ended up at Alligator Alcatraz. She filed at Krome Immigration Court anyway, since there was no process to file a motion at Alligator Alcatraz. She could not find a phone number or an email. When she asked an immigration court clerk what she should do, the clerk told her they had no information about Alligator Alcatraz or any of the detainees at the site. So she called back on July 8. 'And she [the clerk] said that their instructions are to reject those motions because they're not in ICE custody,' Cuprys said. The motion for a bond hearing was stuck in processing for days. Then, late last week it was scheduled for Tuesday. Cuprys said she's not optimistic. She's unsure whether her client will be able to attend. She's also expecting the judge to determine the court doesn't have jurisdiction, because she's been repeatedly told that her client is not in ICE custody. The question about legal jurisdiction is critical for attorneys navigating their clients' cases. But since the detention center opened to detainees on July 2, attorneys say they have had trouble discerning whether their clients are in the custody of the federal government or the state. The Trump administration has insisted in court that it does not have control over the facility where ICE detainees are being held. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said Saturday that the state of Florida — not ICE — is in charge of managing the facility. And while Gov. Ron DeSantis has said the site has on-site legal services for detainees, it is unclear how that is working two weeks into the facility's opening. Trump has also expressed support for Florida's plan to expedite deportations by having qualified National Guard members act as immigration judges at the site, but as of Monday those plans were not yet in motion, as guardsmen had yet to receive any 'formal tasking,' according to a spokesperson for the National Guard. Falling off the grid A DHS official, who asked to remain anonymous because he does not have authority to speak publicly, said there have been a lot of bumps in the rollout, including incorporating the new Alligator Alcatraz detainees into ICE's database system that tracks them. 'Because it's so new, it's going to take a while for them to be added to the ICE locator system,' the official said. The Herald/Times searched 747 names of people who are held or scheduled to be sent to Alligator Alcatraz on the ICE database. Only 40 appeared on the public-facing website, most of them listed as being located at nearby facilities, and three marked with a note to 'call field office.' Eig, the Miami immigration attorney, said one of her clients — a man with no criminal record who was detained by federal immigration agents during a routine check-in at an ICE field office — showed up on the ICE locator last week. But on Monday, she checked again, and his name was no longer there. 'He's completely gone, but he was there,' she said. While detainees are not showing up on the ICE database, officials at the Krome detention center in Miami are regularly interacting with their state counterparts at Alligator Alcatraz. But attorneys interviewed by the Herald/Times have had to figure this all out on their own. As Cuprys tried to represent her clients at Alligator Alcatraz, she started making calls. She said the clerk at Krome suggested she reach out to federal Enforcement and Removal officers. An officer there told her that Alligator Alcatraz wasn't set up yet for hearings and that the state was working on a memorandum of understanding, but it wasn't 'notched out' yet. When Cuprys emailed a legal visit request to the Department of Homeland Security, she was told her client was 'under the custody of the State of Florida,' not the federal government. As the question of legal custody lingers, attorneys are still trying to meet with their clients – but it has not been easy. Victor Martinez, Cuprys' law partner, said staff at the facility told him when he visited Alligator Alcatraz on July 7 that he was one of the first attorneys to try and conduct a legal visitation at the site. So, they had him park and wait for almost five hours outside. 'What they said is that they are not ready to receive attorneys,' Martinez said. 'Maybe they didn't think attorneys were going to go visit their clients. They never set up for that.' Martinez was not allowed inside, and he wasn't able to contact his clients. Neither he nor Cuprys have been able to get their clients on the phone since then.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 93 Palestinians, health officials say
Israeli strikes overnight and into Tuesday killed more than 90 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, including dozens of women and children, health officials said. One strike in the northern Shati refugee camp killed a 68-year-old Hamas member of the Palestinian legislature, as well as a man and a woman and their six children who were sheltering in the same building, according to officials from Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken. One of the deadliest strikes hit a house in Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa district on Monday evening and killed 19 members of the family living inside, according to Shifa Hospital. The dead included eight women and six children. A strike on a tent housing displaced people in the same district killed a man, a woman and their two children. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes. Gaza's Health Ministry said in a daily report on Tuesday afternoon that the bodies of 93 people killed by Israeli strikes had been brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, along with 278 wounded. It did not specify the total number of women and children among the dead. The Hamas politician killed in a strike early on Tuesday, Mohammed Faraj al-Ghoul, was a member of the bloc of representatives from the group that won seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in the last election held among Palestinians in 2006. Hamas won a majority in the vote, but relations with the main Fatah faction that had long led the Palestinian Authority unravelled and ended with Hamas taking over the Gaza Strip in 2007. The legislative council has not formally convened since. The Israeli military says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in densely populated areas. But daily, it hits homes and shelters where people are living without warning or explanation of the target. The latest attacks came after US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held two days of talks last week that ended with no sign of a breakthrough in negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release. Israel has killed more than 58,400 Palestinians and wounded more than 139,000 others in its retaliation campaign since Hamas's attack on October 7 2023, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Just over half the dead are women and children, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its tally. The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, is led by medical professionals. Its count, based on daily reports from hospitals, is considered by the United Nations and other experts to be the most reliable. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its attack 20 months ago, in which militants stormed into southern Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. They abducted 251 others, and the militants are still holding 50 hostages, fewer than half of them are believed to be alive. Israel's air and ground campaign has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and driven some 90% of the population from their homes. Aid groups say they have struggled to bring in food and other assistance because of Israeli military restrictions and the breakdown of law and order, and experts have warned of famine.
Bloomberg
3 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Ailbhe Rea: Rachel Reeves Boxes Herself In on Tax, Again
Back in opposition, Rachel Reeves was warned by Labour officials that if she ruled out increasing the three main revenue-raisers, so tight were the public finances that she would be storing up an enormous political headache for herself in government. But to Reeves, the trade-off was simple. She had seen Labour snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 1992 when John Major attacked 'Labour's tax bombshell', and she had been in Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet on the crushing election night of 2015, when they realised that, despite polling to the contrary, Labour had lost again. Being boxed in on tax after winning an election? 'That would be a nice problem to have,' I'm told she said to colleagues.
