Birmingham City Council meeting halted amid bin strike interruptions

A Birmingham City Council meeting has been dramatically halted as leader John Cotton faced angry questions over the bins strike.

Birmingham reached a bleak milestone last week – three months since the all-out strike began back in March.

The industrial action was triggered by a dispute between the Labour-run council and Unite the union over plans to scrap a Waste Recycling and Collection Officer.

Striking workers have raised concerns about pay in the past while the council’s leadership has repeatedly insisted that a “fair and reasonable” offer has been made.

During a meeting of the city council on Tuesday, June 17, council leader John Cotton was answering a question about the strike from a resident when another man began angrily questioning the councillor from the public gallery.

“Would you take an £8,000 pay cut Cotton?” the man shouted. “Would you? Come on?

“I’m asking you directly John – would you take a £8,000 pay cut?

“That’s what you’re expecting hard working bin workers to take.”

As he was escorted from the gallery, he shouted “p* off you “d*” and then threw what appeared to be a whistle into the council chamber to the confusion of seated councillors.

Following two further interruptions, the meeting was promptly adjourned by the Lord Mayor.

A protest was also held outside the Council House before the meeting, with bin workers holding up a banner and voicing anger at the ongoing situation.

The tense scenes follow a similarly dramatic moment last month when a prestigious ceremony to mark the election of Birmingham’s new Lord Mayor was interrupted by protesters.

Mayor Zafar Iqbal, who serves as a councillor for the Tyseley and Hay Mills ward, took up the politically-neutral role at the lively meeting on May 20.

The grand ceremony on that day was overshadowed at moments when those supporting striking bin workers began to shout from the public gallery.

One woman angrily shouted at the time: “Could you take an £8,000 pay cut?”

Another protester also yelled about workers ‘losing their livelihoods, losing their homes’ before whistles blared in the council chamber room.

The council previously said that all WRCO workers had been offered alternative employment at the same pay, driver training or voluntary redundancy.

Coun Cotton has also said the local authority “cannot and will not entertain anything that would re-open an equal pay liability”.

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