00:00Merrin, this is becoming an international disgrace. Birmingham is ridiculed around the world.
00:07101 days and still no resolution.
00:11Yeah, it is. We're all off in stock. It's 101 days, by the way, since all-out strike action began.
00:17But there's been six months of strike action since the beginning of this dispute.
00:22By the way, those insults were being shouted from the public gallery of council leader John Cotton,
00:28not John Clancy.
00:30Sorry.
00:31That was a previous leader that Labour sacked.
00:34OK, thanks for clarifying.
00:36How do they fix this?
00:38Well, we've explained what needs to be done.
00:41By the way, we asked for a debate on this strike and Labour even refused a debate on the strike.
00:47And, you know, I mean, everything that you said is true about how bad it is.
00:52And just to give you an example, just outside my ward,
00:55I've got a school that hasn't had a waste collection for 10 weeks.
01:00And, you know, all those leftover school dinners that for some reason weren't eaten have been sitting in those bags.
01:07Now, with the temperature climbing to 29 degrees, it's, you know, it's becoming a real health problem.
01:13And in fact, the council is having to spend about 100,000 a month on action just to address those aspects of the health considerations.
01:24So it's it's that I mean, I've got old people's homes in my ward,
01:28which I'm constantly having to chase to get those collected.
01:31Because you can imagine when the sort of human waste that you get in old people's homes tends to build up.
01:36It's got to be people are keeping the waste in their showers and things in bags in their showers and things like that.
01:42It's it's it's every bit as bad as the pictures that you're showing.
01:44But, you know, in the case of things like schools and old people's homes, you know, it's particularly acute.
01:50It must just it must stink in certain parts of the city.
01:53Well, yes, if you if you go to places where there's 10 weeks worth of school dinner waste built up, it will stink and it will and it will smell.
02:03But you ask the question, what do what do we need to do about it?
02:06I mean, we've set out we've set out the plan that needs to be followed.
02:10But you've got to remember in all this, because about half the cabinet are members of Unite, you know, they're conflicted.
02:16It is a conflict of interest in terms of the action that they can take.
02:19But what what needs to be done is, first of all, we've got to remove the equal pay risk.
02:23Which means we have to complete the gradient exercise, which makes it then much more difficult for people to raise equal pay claims.
02:30And at the moment, every month that goes by, and this this exercise was supposed to be finished by April.
02:36It's still going on every month that goes by.
02:38We rack up an additional equal pay bill of up to 14 million pounds.
02:43Then what needs to be done is we need to make the offers subject to a time limit.
02:49So the offers that have been made to the grade threes that are going to be downgraded.
02:53And also now they've discovered they have to downgrade the drivers as well from grade four.
02:57So they've opened up a whole new front.
02:59Those offers have to be time limited to put an end to it.
03:03And of course, it is very difficult for the council leader because you can see that, you know,
03:07the people who support the strike, who are members of his own movement, are shouting insults at him.
03:13I'm so sorry to interrupt you.
03:14We have run out of time, but I think you gave a really good assessment there of where we're at there.
03:17But our hearts go out to the people of Birmingham.
03:20Marion Jenkins there, a shadow cabinet member for finance at Birmingham.
03:23Bankrupt Labour Council.
03:24Bankrupt Labour Council.
03:25Bankrupt Labour Council.
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03:51Bankrupt Labour Council.
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