Excl: proof faithless council, not union, to blame for Birmingham bin strike

Coverage of the ‘Birmingham bin strike’ – the strike by Unite members of the city’s refuse collection workforce – in television news has been largely limited to footage of bin bags and soundbites from Tory MPs condemning the industrial action and trying to exploit the situation to attack Labour leader jeremy Corbyn.

Online coverage has, just occasionally, gone into slightly more depth, but has presented a story of a financially-squeezed council with little choice but to impose changes in order to save over five million pounds a year – with the implication that Unite and its people are being obstructive and unreasonable.

Both versions of the coverage are deeply misleading.

The SKWAWKBOX has spoken to both Birmingham City Council, to Howard Beckett, Unite’s assistant General Secretary who is co-ordinating Unite’s response to the situation in Birmingham – and to mediation service ACAS – to get to the truth of…