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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.
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LEEDS BIN STRIKE
