WORKING HARD FOR LEEDS CENTRAL
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The Leeds bin strike has now entered its seventh week, and although talks have been taking place, there is no sign of an agreement. I have visited the picket line in Cross Green twice and the workers I spoke to were clearly determined, given that they had been put in an impossible position. As one of them put it to me, “If someone came along and said they were going to cut your pay by £3,000-6,000 a year, what would you do?”
Some of you may have seen the interviews I gave Look North, the YEP and the Yorkshire Post three weeks ago in which I called on the Council to lift its preconditions to a return to the negotiating table. The Lib-Dem/Tory council has handled this really badly, and Leeds residents, whose bins are overflowing, are rightly asking themselves why this has happened when lots of other councils have found a way of dealing with the same issue without precipitating a strike. The unions involved – the GMB and Unison – greatly appreciate the solid support they’ve had.