The Labour Party government has called upon the military to help clear garbage from the streets of Birmingham as a continuing union strike has left tens of thousands of tonnes of trash lining the streets of Britain’s second-largest city.
Communities Secretary Angela Rayner has reportedly invoked Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (Maca) powers to draft British Army experts to coordinate efforts to clear up to 21,000 tonnes of trash left rotting on the streets of Birmingham after the city’s garbage collectors went on strike, the Times of London reported.
The left-wing trade Unite union went on strike after the local Labour-run council scrapped the waste recycling and collection officer position to supposedly promote gender equality, after government lawyers argued that the position was created to increase the salary of men.
In 2023, the city went effectively bankrupt after losing a legal dispute which found it was gender discrimination to pay people in male dominated roles like refuse collection more than people in women-dominated ones, like cooking. The £760 million cost and bids to adjust pay scales of heavily unionised workers to respect this court ruling had led to the now weeks-long bin strike.
Unite claims these changes will see hundereds of its members suffer thousands of pounds a year in pay cuts. The council, in turn, has claimed that eliminating the waste recycling and collection officer post would only impact 17 workers and that the salary reduction would be far lower than what the union has said.
Nevertheless, the dispute between the leftist trade union and the left-wing local government and the ensuing trash crisis in Birmingham has become a political headache for Prime Minsiter Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government, particularly in light of the looming council elections across England in three weeks’ time.
Criticisms have also been levied at Birmingham Labour MP Tahir Ali for devoting his time to campaigning for the British government to help construct an airport in Mirpur, Kashmir, in north-east Pakistan, the country from which his parents immigrated to the United Kingdom.
Speaking to GB News last week, a local cab driver said, “What’s that got to do with us? We’ve got problems here.”
In addition to calling up the Army to help solve the problem, the national government has also reportedly begun to urge the Unite union to accept the latest offer from the Birmingham council to end the strike.
It is unclear how much support the soldiers drafted to confront the trash crisis will give, however, given that Downing Street has reportedly ruled out using Army personnel actually to help pick up any of the trash. They will instead likely serve in an advisory and strategic capacity.
A government spokesman said: “The government has already provided a number of staff to support the council with logistics and make sure the response on the ground is swift to address the associated public health risks.
“In light of the ongoing public health risk, a small number of office-based military personnel with operational planning expertise have been made available to the Birmingham City Council to further support in this area.
“This builds on a range of measures we’ve supported the council on to date — including neighbouring authorities providing additional vehicles and crews and opening household waste centres to Birmingham residents.”
Labour Party-Run Birmingham Council Declares Effective Bankruptcy https://t.co/7Xiw6qAujp
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 6, 2023
