Here’s a classic upside down New York Times article that puts the interesting facts way down toward the bottom with practically indecipherable terseness about the cause of the catastrophe after dozens of paragraphs of human interest trivia about the garbagemen’s strike in Birmingham, UK:
A standoff between garbage collectors and municipal officials in Britain’s second largest city has left an estimated 17,000 tons of trash on the streets.
By Stephen Castle
Stephen Castle visited Small Heath, Birmingham, joined a resident driving to a garbage and recycling facility and spoke with striking workers.
April 4, 2025
A pungent smell of rotting garbage fills the air. Bulging sacks of trash pile high, some spilling their festering contents. And, with vermin plaguing parts of the city, at least one resident has claimed to have been bitten by a rat.
With its heritage as a manufacturing powerhouse and its proud civic history, Birmingham likes to call itself Britain’s second city.
Right now, it’s the nation’s garbage capital.
A standoff between striking refuse workers and city officials has left an estimated 17,000 tons of trash piled on city streets that is attracting rats, foxes, cockroaches and maggots.
Why is there a garbage strike in Birmingham?
This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The answer is actually quite interesting — greedy feminist dogma run amok in Labour-run Britain — but NYT subscribers don’t want to hear that. It gives them Bad Feelz.
So, the most glancing reference to the cause of this disgusting situation is left unmentioned until this masterfully boring 24th paragraph:
The origins of the dispute lie in 2023 when Birmingham City Council declared itself essentially bankrupt, partly as a result of equal pay cases brought by workers, and began to implement far-reaching cuts to services.
The first link leads to an only slightly less opaque BBCarticle:
Birmingham City Council is in financial crisis on multiple fronts.
Equal pay claims of up to £760m are among the bills it cannot afford.
But since the extent of the crisis was revealed last month, it has emerged the council thought it could originally settle the matter for just £120m.
It would have happened via what is known as a "memorandum of understanding" with unions and staff.
But this deal collapsed when the GMB union claimed it had found evidence the council was not properly implementing a crucial job evaluation scheme meant to ensure male and female employees were paid equally.
You see, bin men, who are mostly men, were paid more by the city than people who held more genteel jobs, which are filled mostly by women, that didn’t involve lifting stinking heavy stuff. That’s supply and demand.
But in a breakthrough in feminist theory, a judge determined that women in nice jobs should get paid as much as men doing nasty jobs, because women are Good and men are Bad. Or something.
Handing out backpay bankrupted Birmingham and now it’s hard to hire enough bin men at the new lower wages:
Lara Brown’s tweet thread explains what’s really going on:
The Birmingham bin strike has reached its fifth week. Rubbish is piled high, rats are infesting the streets, and experts are concerned about Weil's disease.
🧵on how the Equality Act contributed to this, and how it may cause similar strikes across the country.
7:00 AM · Apr 8, 2025
1/ In 2012, 174 former Birmingham Council employees brought an equal pay appeal to the Supreme Court.
They argued Birmingham City Council had provided lower pay to women in predominantly female jobs (cooks, cleaners & care staff) compared to refuse collectors and road workers.
2/ They won their case.
Birmingham Council was found to have contravened equal pay legislation because they failed to provide bonuses to cooks, cleaners, catering and care staff, but did offer them to bin men, street cleaners, and grave diggers.
3/ This is not a case of women being paid less than men for the same work.
The claimants drew a comparison between manually taxing jobs, with higher labour shortages, and unsociable hours (bin men) and more popular jobs like cooking and cleaning.
4/ Because they lost the case, Birmingham Council have had thousands of equal pay claims brought against them.
So far, they have paid out £1.1 billion to former employees in equal pay compensation.
They estimated further liability in the region of £650m and £760m.
5/ The first consequence of this is obvious - it caused the council to go bankrupt.
In September 2023 they issues a Section 114 notice declaring the council to be “in a negative General Fund position” due to “the cost of providing Equal Pay claims”.
6/ The second consequence - the council urgently had to equalise pay for bin men and catering staff - or risk further payouts.
Because they were bankrupt, there was only one way to do this, by cutting pay for refuse collectors.
7/ Birmingham Council have been finding ways to cut the pay of those in male dominated professions.
Unite report they've cut £1,000 in shift pay already. They've also cut the highest paying refuse collection job-Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (an £8k pay cut for some)
8/ The council is at a total impasse. They have to make these cuts - if they don't they risk further equal pay lawsuits.
They are bankrupt so they simply cannot afford to bring up the pay of cooks, social care workers, and cleaners instead.
9/ Birmingham won't be the only council to experience these problems.
Refuse collection is tough work. Councils need to pay more in recognition of this.
But, the workforce is also around 73% male. So will always be vulnerable to equal pay lawsuits.
10/ Equal pay for the same work is a hard won right that should be defended at al costs.
But equal pay for similar work, as deemed by a judge, is madness.
It will bankrupt businesses and councils, and make it impossible to provide basic services.
Well, that’s pretty interesting. But you don’t read the first half of New York Times articles to find out interesting stuff because some of that might be stuff you’d rather not know about how Your Team has, say, turned Birmingham, UK into a stinking rat’s nest.
This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Birmingham's bin men might be the only people who do real work in that city. The rest are migrants and the female social workers who hand out welfare to them while covering up the grooming gangs. Where are the Peaky Blinders when you need them?
Wait there’s the solution- give the bin men full pay as long as they agree to all identify as women!
Birmingham's bin men might be the only people who do real work in that city. The rest are migrants and the female social workers who hand out welfare to them while covering up the grooming gangs. Where are the Peaky Blinders when you need them?