Labour councils are being held to ransom

So much for Labour’s vaunted relationship with the trade unions. Ministers had hoped that pay rises in the public sector, coupled with new workplace rights, would appease their paymasters and give the new Government a relatively clear run without industrial disruption. But they reckoned without the stubborn recklessness of the Unite union, whose strike among bin workers in Birmingham has left the country’s second city looking like a war zone.

Rubbish has been piled in the streets for more than a month, resulting in a plague of rats. Efforts to resolve the dispute this week were rejected by union members and the misery for Birmingham’s residents shows no sign of ending.

How has the local authority found itself in a position where it can be held to ransom? Over recent decades many councils have privatised their bin collections, but Labour authorities tend to continue with in-house services for ideological reasons.

Local authorities, whose principal functions should be to clear rubbish, clean the streets and provide essential public services, have been overwhelmed by the costs of providing social care and pensions to retired employees. Many are massively in debt. Birmingham is effectively bankrupt.

Part of the problem stems from a flawed deal with Unite in 2017, also over waste services, which led to legal action over equal pay that has cost the council hundreds of millions of pounds. Residents face another big council tax rise of more than 7 per cent to try to fill the gap. Arguably the problems that faced the council and some retailers over “work of equal value” will be compounded by the workplace rights and the establishment of a Fair Work Agency.

Birmingham has declared a “major incident” and is relying on rubbish contractors from elsewhere to make a dent on the mountain of refuse. The Government has asked Army logistics experts to help plan a strategy for its removal. But this has run into the intransigence of Unite, which says the council’s redesignation of roles will mean a small number of its members facing a pay cut. They are now threatening to extend the dispute across the country.

With local elections looming, voters might consider that this debacle is happening in a Labour‑run council in dispute with a trade union affiliated to the Labour Party and draw their own conclusions.