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Leeds bin strike: Private firms on standby to do fortnightly collections
Private contractors are poised to empty bins in Leeds once a fortnight in a strike-breaking move.
Leeds council leader Richard Brett declared that the collections of non-recycable waste could be up and running by the end of this week.
He told striking refuse workers he "simply can't envisage" caving in to their demands.
Speaking to the YEP at the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth, Coun Brett said the council had been looking for private sector firms to move rubbish.
He said: "We hope to be in the next week working towards a situation where everyone gets their black bin collected alternate weeks. It's an indefinite strike that's been called and we have a duty to move the rubbish and keep Leeds clean and healthy in terms of there not being rats getting into food waste."
On Friday and Saturday 27 bin wagons were collecting in Leeds, 20 of them from a private firm and seven council vehicles, Coun Brett said.
The normal number which collects non recyclable waste is 37 each day.
He said residents would not see a normal service because many
recycling and garden waste bins will remain uncollected.
He said they would not pose a "major health hazard", though the council
faces extra costs of using landfill because of a fall in recycling.
Bin crews and street cleansing staff began their strike on September 7 over a proposed pay and grading structure that would mean wage reductions for the majority of refuse workers.
The council has drawn up the new structure to meet equal pay legislation in which people doing work of equal value are paid the same.
Unions claim the proposals would cut some collectors' pay by up to 6,000 per year from February 2011.
The workers were offered pay protection for three years which still has 18 months to run.
Coun Brett said that giving in to the strikers would lead to the council's entire proposed pay structure unravelling, prompting costly legal challenges and hitting the pay packets of other poorly paid workers.
He said: "Were we to cave in it might threaten the situation of some relatively poorly paid women who are never going to go on strike – day care assistants who on a logical analysis of what they do have to have a lot of interpersonal skills to look after older people.
"They are the type of people who are never going to withdraw their labour because they would not be able to live with older people just not getting a service. They have every right to a decent pay."
He added: "That's why it is very, very difficult for us to simply give in.
"I have had no talks at all with any senior officer or any other politician about a climbdown scenario."
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Weather for Leeds
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
