Theyve been on strike for a few weeks,as theyre haveing their wages alledgedly reduced to conform to union demands that council staff get paid equal rates for doing work of similar worth, one chap gets £18,000 for emptying bins,its not difficult is it bins are those large green, blue or grey things full of rubbish.

I think council have had to increase a lot of women's wages who were illegally getting paid less, and the better paid binmen are having to foot the bill. Or something.

Glad it takes us 3 weeks to fill a bin, as that's how often our bin's getting emptied now.

Suprised they haven't called out the military to fill in for the strikers as usually happens. Oh silly me, our military is a shadow of its former size and whats available is rather busy elsewhere or supporting operations elsewhere.

sod the military. Let's get some contract binmen in & use the wages we're not paying the strikers, to pay for it.

Oh and BTW, the whole refuse service is up for tender in November. Do we think the in-house bid stands a chance? No? neither do Leeds City Council. "The in-house bid is shot" was the phrase they used…

Thank the lords of refuse I live in Bradford district 😉

Instead of paying unemployed people to sit at home, why cant they be paid to empty the bins, now thats got to be an election promise by somebody.

they're on strike because their bosses are proposing to cut their salaries by up to £6000 a year. which is obviously totally unacceptable.
would you accept your boss forcing a major deduction of wages on your salary ? would you f##k. no one goes on strike lightly these days – for one there are so many legal hurdles to be met prior to calling the strike for another people don't get paid on strike – these workers should be admired for standing strong and putting their money where their mouths are.
the tory leader of leeds council is on app.£200,000 a year – why don't we cost cut on his salary and benefits , no-one needs that amount of salary.
and as for it's only emptying bins – its not exctly hard is it. how much would it take to get you out of bed 5 sometimes 6 days a week to work outside shifting other peoples stinking garbage week in week out in all kinds of weather
it's easy to criticise when your sat at your laptop etc. have you taken the time to talk to these guys on the picket lines and get their side of the story ? no i didn't think so.
it's also easy to get fired up against workers such as binmen due to the nature of the consequences of them striking, in this instance rubbish piling up etc. well if you want it to stop and get things back to normal rather than picking on the workers and/or the unions, vent your anger towards the bosses they have come up with the proposals , they are the pay masters they are the people responsible for the bins not getting collected in leeds.

theyre haveing their wages alledgedly reduced to conform to union demands that council staff get paid equal rates for doing work of similar worth

If we did not work to get them worse conditions than they were currently on it would be very difficult to recruit and retain members. 🙄

The government brought in the equal pay act in the early 70's

'kin 'ell john drummer – i never had you down for a psuedo fascist neo liberal !
get contract workers in to do the work of the striking bin workers ! thats scab labour !
pay the unemployed to clear the bins ????? so that we can make the bin men unemployed ? great policy – lets accelerate the race to the bottom by financially undermining everyone.what do you do ? and how much do you get paid ? i could probably find a couple of dozen people more than capable and prepared to do your jobs for less money.

Ripple of applause for stAn-Bad Brains MBC

I've no idea if the strike is justified or not, but given that you don't get paid, it's not something anyone does lightly.

stAn – I couldn't agree more with you – sorry but I didn't press the sarcasm button hard enough.
This is what LCC are doing – you only have to listen to Radio Leeds of a morning. The poor sods who do the sh*tty job are shagged left right & centre.

I think (nay, know) the vast majority of Leeds residents are with the binmen on this one, but they're well & truly ****. Take a pay cut or else…

Same thing has happened in my local council, dinner ladies etc. should have been on same money as bin men- money backdated, needs to be found from somewhere. Let me see…..now the arseh0les who run the council(execs and councilors) who should have known about this stuff….no that would be crazy, what about the bin men?, street sweepers? etc. Aye they'll do, drop their wages!

thank f##k for that john i was just about to strip you of your skulls (Bad Brains MBC in joke)

what we need to sort issues like this out is the support from all sections of the community – bosses threaten to cut refuse workers pay etc. workers strike and communities mobilise bosses get the message

an injury to one is an injury to all !

lets raise the peoples army and take control of the state – now thats a revolutionary idea 😉

UP THE WORKERS !

speaking of skulls, I need to do a NMD ride soon…might even drag Shaun along

what we need to sort issues like this out is the support from all sections of the community – bosses threaten to cut refuse workers pay etc. workers strike and communities mobilise bosses get the message

didn't the witch make that illegal?

I remember walking through Wakey at 5am one morning in '84, past the back of my old school, and seeing the convoys of black marias setting off from the police college on Westfield Road(?) towards the mines.

"two nations under one flag, divided more & more, in our own sweet green and pleasant land, in 1984" – NMA "1984"

I can't work out if this is a political master stroke from the council….or a PR disaster (maybe it's both)

I have a hunch that the council have forced the bin men into a (understandable) strike in order to justify refusing (scuse pun) to entertain a bid from an in house team on the grounds that they are trouble makers.

I'm not sure how the bin men will do out of this. Presumably the private companies who will be putting in a bid for the contract will need to bring employees in from somewhere, and this could include current in-house staff.

This could be a good thing for them because, being no longer employees of the council, they will not be subject to the equal pay legislation so in theory they could legally stay on the same pay (or more).

By the same stroke it could also be a bad thing. There are a lot of unemployed people out there right now, driving salaries down through supply/demand, and creating less chance of current bin men obtaining a post with the successful bidder.

I think it is probably likely to be a bad thing for most current bin men, though.

john drummer – How long ago was she in power and for how many of those years gone by has an apparently socialist government been in power? Hell, for a few years such was their majority they could have pushed through any bill they wanted but strangely they've not even looked at that piece of legistation she introduced.

hey Neil – I think you're not far off the truth, and it can only be a bad thing for the bin men (and any other service that LCC – or any other council – decides to privatise later).

Can you honestly see Acme Refuse Inc paying more for the job than the council were / are hoping to reduce their wages to? I can't.

Imagine you're a bin man with 25 years experience, and no experience of doing anything else. Leeds City Council privatise the refuse service, Acme win the tender. Acme have no staff with experience. The former employees of LCC are now unemployed & have no way – especially in a recession – of getting a job doing anything else. Acme write to the (now unemployed) bin men offering 80% of what they would have been on at LCC if they accepted the pay cut.

Take a job, any job, or sit on the dole, lose your house etc etc?

Rock & a hard place, poor bast*rds

apparently socialist

there you have it in a nutshell, S&J

there are ways round it

workers take legal industrial action.community mobilises when they are not working (saturday afternoon for starters – doesn't suit everyone but of you're not working at least you can get a ride in first.) march through city to town hall , listen to guest speakers etc. deliver petitons to council etc. speak to press etc. instruct MP's to get involved – thats why you vted 'em in (don't complain about what they do unless you are prepared to really bring them to task – Ed Balls still owes me a pint and not because we are mates !) hell we could even search and destroy a few EDL and BNP monkeys while we are at it.
if we are not getting any where we ramp up the protests – human shield round council offices , road blockades etc. Ok OK it may seem like i'm getting a bit carried away but I've actually seen these tactics employed to great success in south america

one day my friends , one day all this will be ours and all will be equal and live with the dignity they deserve

EL PUEBLO UNIDO JAMAS SERA VENCIDO !

an apparently socialist government been in power?

Do you think NuLab are/were socialist sooty? Genuine question.

all will be equal and live with the dignity they deserve

I wish. Sadly this f*cking country is too full of "me me me" types for that to ever work.

right. I'm off to BC. Any IT jobs in Vancouver?

I've just heard of an urgent call from Zelaya Bad Brains. Apparently he's in desperate need of an advisor – can you call the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa ASAP ?

Hasta la victoria siempre

I live in Heaqdingley and it stinks! the council need to sort it out quick.

john drummer – But I'm sure that the 'apparently socialist' Labour party was voted for on more than one occassion by Labour supporters who consider themselves proper socialists. You know, the sort who would voted for a shaved chimp if it were wearing a red rosette because, well they've always voted Labour. Sadly, in desperation to get blue tie wearing Tories out many Labour supporters were happy to ignore any remaining principles they had left and vote for a version of the same that wear red ties instead, and for that any true Labour supporter should be ashamed.

I think that's beyond the council 😉

JOKING!

Nachos for me please.

the Labour party as we have known it for the past few years can hardly be described as a socialist party.
that said , asmy grandad used to say – you can't make a silk purse out of a pigs ear , and if ever this country was turned into a pigs ear it wa 1984/85 and the rest of the thatcher/tory years – ask anyone from a mining /steel/engineering/textile/printing background , to name but a few.

for more of this stuff look back in the morning star archives , i've got more than a few rants and speaches printed/quoted in there including a rather prophetic warning about the so called economic downturn and collapse of the banks.

i'll leave you with this one
“Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.”
Jose Antonio Viera Gallo

PEACE

Sadly, in desperation to get blue tie wearing Tories out many Labour supporters were happy to ignore any remaining principles they had left and vote for a version of the same that wear red ties instead, and for that any true Labour supporter should be ashamed.

Who should they have voted for instead?

Dr Doolittle – As I've said New Labour (well just 'Labour' really, thats what it says on the stuff they put through my door) were voted for my many people who consider themselves as having socialist principles and I'm sure they wouldn't ignore those just to see someone with a red tie sitting on the benches to the speaker's right would they?

But I'm sure that the 'apparently socialist' Labour party was voted for on more than one occassion by Labour supporters who consider themselves proper socialists

aye, and with a general election looming, what choice is left? Vote for NuLab? Tories? WishyWashies? None of the above?

back in '97 it was "anything to get rid of the Tories"; the next General Election was pretty much a continuation of that. And the one after that. And the next one? "Anything to get rid of Brown". That's how Politics works in this country.

£18K? Why did I go to uni again?

Ok it's a dirty job…

It was me that asked sooty, leave drummer john alone 🙁

And the last time I asked you, you gave me a similar answer and avoided admitting that you don't consider nulabour to be a socialist party. Which begs the question why you described it as

an apparently socialist government

when you know it is not. I'd say you know it is a corporate government, one that initiated the American model of administration in the UK. I can understand your annoyance at these people, but to call them socialist is unfair on socialists.

zaskar – deferred gratification

Dr Dolittle – ta, but I did ask it as well.

Sadly this country works on a first past the post system at general election time. In effect this means either Labour orConservative.

No two ways around it while we have a FPTP system – and that's not going to change in my lifetime. PR = Turkeys voting for Christmas (or Thanksgiving if you're from USA or Canada)

So we get a decade or two of party A in power, followed by a decade or two of party B in power, and then it reverses, and so on ad infinitum, and when you look back on it, who can tell the difference?

ranos – 'They' should have been more active at the local level to stop professional politicians (hardly the best people fight the socialist cause, being as they aren't experienced in the real world) from being nominated as candidates. 'They' should have paid attention to what Blair and his gang were actually proposing if they got into power and more importantly, who he was getting money off to fund his campaign. Getting paly with bankers and city folk might after all point to who he would be looking after eventually. 'They' should have ensured that the people theywere voting for were the people they actually wanted to represent them, the Labour party is supposed to be the main party in which the wishes of the rank and file make the most difference.

dr doolittle/john drummer – Do you believe GB would describe the current Labour party as socialist? I know it not and you know its not but it does seem a little strange that so many people with strong socialist values will continue to vote for it, repeatedly. A party that, after 12 years in power, has still not made any attempt to remove from the statute books laws pushed through by that woman which people, including some commenting on this thread, find so untasteful. Such as making striking in support of other strikers illegal.

Agree with Stan of Bad Brains – its all very well for the senior management and councillors to expect other people, and particularly those who get the lowest levels of pay, to take a pay cut of effectively one-third from £18k to £12k. Why can't they take a pay cut themselves so that the wages of the dinner ladies, or whoever it is they are using for comparative purposes for the equal pay, can be increased to an appropriate level. I also find it difficult to understand how you equate the job of a binman to people who cook lunch at schools.

Even the local MPs are criticising the Council for making unrealistic pre-conditions before they will even sit round the negotiating table.

And surely stating that an "in-house" bid is unlikely to win any contract which is put out to tender (as apparently stated by a senior council official) is against EEC procurement laws.

Leeds City Council could start saving money by getting rid of the expensive speed cameras every 400 metres on the main arterial roads, and not creating ridiculous one way systems which seem to change every year.

'They' should have been more active at the local level to stop professional politicians (hardly the best people fight the socialist cause, being as they aren't experienced in the real world) from being nominated as candidates. 'They' should have paid attention to what Blair and his gang were actually proposing if they got into power and more importantly, who he was getting money off to fund his campaign. Getting paly with bankers and city folk might after all point to who he would be looking after eventually. 'They' should have ensured that the people theywere voting for were the people they actually wanted to represent them,

So it was quite obvious they were not socialists? and not "apparently socialist" either. Really, slagging off ideologies unrelated to a crime is just not cricket.

Pardon me J the D, thought the sootster was replying to something I'd said.

Do you believe GB would describe the current Labour party as socialist?

He'd describe it as playboy mansion style governance if he thinks they'll get some votes, but Harperson would probably veto that. And Madlescum would like to employ images of the Hitler youth on an Austrian hillside, but that isn't going to happen. Whether they consider themselves as "socialists", as Cherie Booth does, is totally irrelevant.

he might have been, or might not; anyway, I'm off to bed.

G'night John.

I watched
Salo/ the 120 days in Sodom
last night. I could understand the anger of the film maker. My favourite scene was the Italian fascists feasting on dung.