Iron Angle: Birmingham cabinet talks rubbish
Councillors were in a particularly jovial mood at the first Birmingham City Council cabinet meeting for seven weeks, not that they really had anything to smile about. Perhaps it was gallows humour.
First off, there was nothing much on the agenda, which is the way the controlling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition likes it these days. Fewer controversial decisions to take, fewer chances of bad headlines, everyone’s happy.
Secondly, this was new Tory regeneration member Tim Huxtable’s debut and to mark the occasion he was handed a stinker of a report. Not that you would have known from the carefully censored public documents, which referred simply to the matter of the Fleet and Waste Management Assimilation.
Cabinet members were being asked to consider what to do after being caught out over a blatant attempt to bribe council workers into not striking by handing binmen wage rises of £8,000 a year.
The wheeze, concocted two years ago in the middle of union fury over the council’s new pay and grading system, did have the immediate desired effect of buying off the binmen who decided to carry on working despite losing annual “bonuses” of up to £15,000.
So, from a short-term political point of view, the bribe worked. No rubbish piled upon the streets, no bad headlines for Birmingham City Council. Everyone happy.
Except that the strategy did not work for very long. As the unions pointed out at the time, handing an £8,000 pay rise to male refuse collectors while not offering a similar rise to women council workers on the same grade was a direct breach of equal pay law.
Conservative-Liberal Democrat council leaders, presumably after taking advice from city lawyers and HR experts, refused to listen to the unions and scraped together some cock and bull story about methods of working changing and the need to “upskill” the binmen in the arts of recycling (not enough time now to discuss the skills required to pick up and empty black bin bags) which justified giving the highly-trained workforce an £8,000 pay rise.
It was, as the most junior lawyer surely ought to have recognised, a pitiful argument unlikely to stand up for more than a few minutes in an employment tribunal.
Two years on, the cabinet faces an impossible dilemma – either increase the wages of thousands of low-paid women workers to meet the binmen’s standards, or take the £8,000 away from the binmen.
Given that the council already faces a £600 million-plus back pay bill to compensate women workers discriminated against, a few more million might not make much difference.
It is reported that the cabinet, meeting in a lengthy private session, decided on wage cuts. If true, this will certainly lead to the binmen’s strike that the council was so keen to avoid.
Anyone unfortunate enough to have attended the public session of the cabinet would have remained blissfully unaware of the mess council leaders find themselves in.
As is the custom in Birmingham, items of embarrassment to the council are always taken in private in a process that drives a coach and horses through the concept of open government.
The only clue in the public written report was a reference to “sensitive human resources, financial and legal issues” in conjunction with the Fleet and Waste Management assimilation in 2008.
The way council leader Mike Whitby handled the item, you’d have thought the report highlighted yet another award for best practice in the local government world.
Whitby burbled away in his usual fashion: “I’d now like to ask Councillor Timothy Huxtable to introduce this very good report.” That was accompanied by titters from other cabinet members and knowing winks.
Had Neville Summerfield still been in the cabinet, he’d have doubtless piped up with “this is a good news story, leader”. Sadly, Neville was sacked to make way for Tim.
Oh, yes. What laughs, What a very English sense of humour. What fools. As Kipling almost said: “If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs and blaming it on you, don’t know the heck what’s going on.”
This is the second hugely expensive legal cock-up to hit the council in recent weeks, following on from the botched tree maintenance contract where the final bill including compensation is thought to stand at more than £1 million. The cost of buying off the binmen will be far more than that.
Far from burying the truth in secret meetings, the cabinet should publish the advice it was given by senior council officers when considering the £8,000 pay offer to refuse collectors in the summer of 2008. That would enable taxpayers to work out exactly who was at fault for such a disastrous decision.
It would be instructive to examine in great detail the process by which Coun Whitby and his colleagues convinced themselves that they could get away with what, from the outside anyway, seemed to be an obvious bribe.
Was the advice they were given flawed? If that is the case, highly paid officers should be subjected to disciplinary procedures.
Or could it have been the case, as some people think more likely, that the cabinet simply panicked at the prospect of drawn out industrial action by the binmen resulting in mountains of black bin bags rotting on street corners?
As has been noted recently, the Tories in particular do appear to have a bit of a thing about dustbin collections.
Mike Whitby is the person with the answers, but he won’t be saying anything for as long as compliant lawyers allow the cabinet to sit in secret.
