Unite has accused Birmingham city council of trying to “break” the bin strikes after analysis showed the council had doubled spending on agency staff since the start of the year-long industrial action.
Birmingham’s bin workers have taken part in an all-out strike since March last year over proposed pay cuts and role changes. The dispute has left residents without a fully functioning waste collection service and has led to towering waste and overflowing bins on the streets.
A Guardian analysis of Birmingham city council’s spending data shows it doubled its spending on agency staff in fleet and waste operations – which covers bin collections as well as other refuse services – after the all-out strike began in March 2025.
The council spent more than £4.3m on agency staff working in the department between April to December 2024. This doubled during the same period in 2025, to more than £8.8m.
Birmingham city council said it strongly refuted “any suggestion that agency workers have been carrying out work normally undertaken by striking workers” – which is an unlawful practice. The Labour-run council said it was using the “same level of agency staff as before the strike”.
It added: “The figures do not refer solely to the residential waste collection service, which is where there is industrial action, but the waste service as a whole … It would therefore be misleading to suggest the figures relate to the council’s response to industrial action,” a spokesperson for the council said.
However, Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, accused the council of “breaking the law by using agency staff to try to break the strike”.
She said: “The council continually denied it but the figures here, that the Guardian have exposed, show the truth. The facts are clear. The council needs to stop wasting Birmingham residents’ money trying to break the strike and instead resolve the strike.”
Refuse workers employed by Birmingham city council began a series of stoppages in January 2025 over pay cuts and role changes, including the removal of the waste recycling and collection role that Unite said would cost some members £8,000 a year. The council has disputed that figure.
The council spent on average £481,000 a month on fleet and waste operations agency staff in the nine months before strikes began in January 2025. That increased to £971,000 in the month stoppages began, and rose again to more than £1.2m in March 2025, when workers began an all-out strike.
The council said it had always utilised agency staff to provide contingency cover for leave, sickness and to cover vacancies in waste. It said the more than £2m spent on agency staff in January 2026 included “increased fly-tipping clearance crews, grounds maintenance and Christmas bank holiday payments”.
Mark Stuart, a professor of employment relations at the University of Leeds, said the case came down to “what the increased expenditure has been for”.
“For the union, the position seems clear. Expenditure on agency staff has doubled over the period since the start of the indefinite strike action. This would seem to offer at least some basis for legal challenge by Unite,” he said.
Stuart added: “The council seems to be suggesting it is business as usual, but would need to demonstrate that the increased expenditure on agency workers has not been directed to mitigating against the disruptions caused directly by the dispute.”
The council and Unite were in negotiations last summer but talks broke down in July. Unite claimed government-appointed commissioners had blocked an agreement between the union and the council. However, the council said it had “reached the absolute limit of what we can offer”.
In December, agency workers joined the picket lines for the first time over claims of bullying and harassment. Unite, which was fined £265,000 for breaching an injunction that prohibited the blocking of waste lorries at depots earlier this month, has said the strikes could last beyond September this year.
