Birmingham City Council to Axe 600 Jobs – Build The Union Fightback!

Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, is to send 600 employees to the dole queue. It has issued a Section 114 notice and will cease all non-statutory spending.

This is the same local authority which in 2010 employed over 26,000 people and now employs only 9,500! Wasteful overspending on vanity projects includes a botched new IT system called Oracle at a cost of £100 million and the Commonwealth Games to which Birmingham City Council contributed £184 million, just to name a few. At the same time, just months before the games, the council reported a £25 million black hole in its funding for the event and said that the shortfall would be made up of contingency funds.

Well, it seems that the contingency fund the council had in mind was to kick loyal staff, some of whom have worked for the authority for decades, to the dole queue and forcing them with their begging bowls (with their kids in tow), to the nearest food bank to make ends meet!

‘Consultations’ with employees and trade unions are taking place at pace to consult with those whose jobs are now at risk to plug the £300 million black hole in the council’s finances.

Trade union action needed

Talks and cooperation between the three main council trade unions (Unite, Unison and GMB) must start in earnest to fight these cuts. Coordinated action needs to move with haste before it is too late. Unions cannot stand by and allow these cuts without a fight.

Since the Tory government came to power, 27% in real-terms cuts in core spending, and a lack of councillors prepared to fight these cuts, has left councils across the country without the resilience they need to meet new challenges. By this time next year, demand pressures will have added £15 billion (almost 29%) to the cost of delivering services since 2021-22.

Since 2018, six councils (Labour and Conservative) have effectively declared themselves bankrupt: Slough, Croydon, Thurrock, Woking, Birmingham and Nottingham, and many other councils across the length and breadth of the country have reported that they may have to do the same. (see ‘Nottingham council cuts: Fighting section 114’ at socialistparty.org.uk)

What can councils do?

But what are local authorities doing about it? Nothing! Councils need to organise mass campaigns, working with trade unions and community groups rather than fighting them, to put pressure on central government to reverse and demand that that more money be provided to protect the most vulnerable citizens in our society.

Labour councils like Birmingham continue to carry out cuts on behalf of central government. But what is stopping them spending to save services and getting funding re-imbursed by an incoming Starmer government. This is what public sector unions must be demanding of the Labour leader, and if not be prepared to take steps to launch a new party that can take on the pro-austerity politicians at the next local and general elections.

Save Youth Services!

Socialist Party members appeared in support of a protest march on Tuesday 13th February, opposing cuts soon to be levied against youth services by Birmingham City Council.

Around 100 people gathered at 0900 on Tuesday to march from the Library of
Birmingham to the Council House, with speakers thereafter highlighting the importance
of youth centres & services as lifelines for disenfranchised young people. This follows the Council’s declaration of bankruptcy in September last year, with equal pay claims amounting to £760 million and an £80 million overspend on a failing IT system breaking the back of a city that had long been battered by a decade of underfunding.

The bill for the Council’s incompetence has predictably been footed to the city’s
workers: this Tuesday saw a £51.5 million cut for the children and families department revealed, on top of a £23.7 million cut to adult social care, the loss of 600 public sector jobs as part of an overall package of £300m cuts over two years, and a 21% increase to council tax over the same time frame after the receipt of special permission from the central government (as increases of just 5% would typically warrant a local referendum).

This is to be expected from an authority that has repeatedly foregone its obligations to its constituents in favour of placating Westminster, despite its hundreds of millions of pounds in reserves and its extensive borrowing powers.

Now more than ever, we need a mass workers’ campaign to fight back against cuts, unfair pay discrepancies, and all other ruling-class attacks and incompetencies. This is why the Socialist Party will stand in the upcoming election, as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, to provide an alternative to capitalist parties, while also continuing to support genuine workers’ campaigns on the ground.

Teachers Say “We Won’t Pay!”

Earlier this week, Birmingham District of the National Education Union, representing teachers and teaching assistants across Birmingham schools, discussed how they can defend working conditions and public services in light of the council declaring effective bankruptcy. The below motion was passed overwhelmingly:

Birmingham NEU notes that:

• Birmingham city council says it is “effectively bankrupt” and has issued a Section 114 notice halting all ‘none-essential’ expenditure.
• There have been sharp cuts to council funding from Westminster since the austerity drive in 2010, with total council funding across England cut in real terms by more than 50% over the decade to 2020. The Local Government Association estimates English councils face a funding gap of almost £3bn over the next two years just to keep services standing still.
• Birmingham Council has had its funding from Government cut by £1billion since 2010.
• Birmingham Council still had £668.4m in reserves as of March this year, and extensive borrowing powers that could be used to buy time while fighting for the funding our city needs.

Birmingham NEU believes that:

• There should be no attempts to make our members and other workers in Birmingham pay for this crisis.
• There should be no attempts to divide the Council’s workforce, by ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. All should get equal pay for equal work, and a decent pay rise.
• We need a mass campaign involving unions and community organisations to fight back against cuts to frontline services, to pay all workers fairly, and to stop our city being run by unelected commissioners.

Birmingham NEU agrees

• To call on Birmingham Labour council to refuse to make cuts to services, and instead to use its reserves and borrowing powers, and mount a campaign with the trade unions and community for the funding necessary.
• To demand that Keir Starmer immediately pledges that an incoming Labour government will underwrite any borrowing necessary by Birmingham Council so that there are no further cuts to jobs and services.
• To continue working with BTUC and sister trade unions to oppose any cuts to jobs and services.

This motion shows the fighting approach by council unions needed to stop our public services and working class communities paying the price for Blairite and Tory austerity with further cuts and privatisation.

We invite everyone who wants to discuss what this would look like to come to our public meeting next month, featuring socialist former MP Dave Nellist and local trade union activists:

7:30pm, Monday 2nd October

Top floor, The Wellington

Bennetts Hill

Birmingham City Centre

B2 5SN

No Confidence In Commissioners or Cuts Councillors!

As a result of Birmingham City Council declaring itself bankrupt through its section 114 notice, as we write, cabinet minister Michael Gove will appoint commissioners in the next few days to run the city. Regardless of any expertise in delivering public services any of these people may have, we can be sure that the Tory government’s austerity policies will be followed to the letter.

There is speculation that the Tories will loot Birmingham before they are kicked out of office and ‘preside over what is likely to be a fire sale of assets, which could include the Library of Birmingham and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.’ Assets treasured by Brummies will be sold off to make up for financial incompetence. Council workers and service users are not responsible for the council’s financial position and the Socialist Party does not believe that they should bear the cost of it.

We are also against the appointment of unelected and unaccountable commissioners to supervise the city. The Socialist Party will fully back any action by the council unions to defend jobs and services.

In the early 1970s, councillors in the small Derbyshire town of Clay Cross refused to increase council house rents when instructed to by the Tory government. The government sent commissioners in who they refused to co-operate with to the point they refused to provide them with desks and chairs, and they even had to buy their own tea cups.

After six months of non co-operation they left with their tail between their legs and rents not increased. Compared to the 70s, today the Tories are in disarray and any organised coordinated fight back between local government leaders and its workers against carrying out any cuts on the city would trigger further fractoring in Sunaks’s government.

Not only do we believe that a similar attitude from Birmingham council workers could produce a similar result to Clay Cross but such a stance would have the full support of the people of Birmingham. The lobby of the council meeting of 12 September was a good start but there needs to be a mass campaign actively involving all council workers.

Socialist Party members have been ridiculed for years by councillors when we urged them to defy austerity and set a balanced no cuts budget using borrowing powers and reserves where necessary.

We were often told that if they took this course of action the government would send in commissioners. Well, they refused to take our advice and commissioners are now at the entrance to the Council House despite Labour councillors obediently carrying out Tory cuts for years.

Working class Brummies will rightly want to see these cuts making councillors held to account for this, along with their failure to deal with equal pay issues and the £100m bill for the Oracle IT failure. But a Tory-appointed establishment-led enquiry can’t be relied upon to do this! We need a transparent union and community led investigation into what lead the council reaching crisis point, with democratic oversight by local residents.

Council unions have quite correctly blamed the Tory government for the funding crisis in public services. But despite attacks on Bin and Homecare workers being beaten back by determined strike action, the local leaderships have often been reluctant to oppose Labour cuts consistently.

This has meant that they were unprepared for the scale of fight needed to maintain jobs and services. This needs to be corrected now and a fight on a scale never seen before is necessary.

Labour in Birmingham has shown that it is totally incapable of defending jobs and services and a Labour government in Westminster would be no more successful. Keir Starmer has ruthlessly purged Labour candidates’ panels of people who are opposed to cuts and austerity and has remained utterly silent on Birmingham’s situation in the last few weeks.

If Birmingham Labour Cllrs refuse to take the necessary steps to defend the city, then the local unions need to form their own list of worker’s candidates to support at the ballot box. Candidates prepared to stand on an anti austerity programme.

It is now time to take the crucial steps to form a new party which puts the interests of workers and the poor at its heart. Birmingham is not the first council in recent months to declare a section 114, and it will not be the last. What it can be is the platform of a new wave of struggle against cuts in the local government arena.

Local trade union activists should take courage from the recent strike waves in worker’s preparation and determination to fight – but in order to do this a lead needs to be taken from the worker’s movement to inspire and provide a fighting strategy to win.

We invite everyone who wants to discuss what this would look like to come to our public meeting next month, featuring socialist former MP Dave Nellist and local trade union activists:

7:30pm, Monday 2nd October

Top floor, The Wellington

Bennetts Hill

Birmingham City Centre

B2 5SN

Birmingham Council Crisis – We Won’t Pay!

A Birmingham City Council Worker

Birmingham City Council’s state of “effective bankruptcy” hit the headlines this week, issuing a Section 114 notice on 5 September halting all new expenditure. On the surface, the financial “black hole” comes primarily from a £750 million equal pay claim. Naturally, the council has been quick to pass off the blame onto the primarily women workers who have fought for equal pay with male-dominated roles. However, these issues have been long in the making and could have been avoided – and certainly aren’t the fault of workers in male-dominated roles such as the bin service, who have seen their pay and working practices come under attack by the Blairite council in recent years!

Equal pay claims have been an ongoing issue for the Labour-led council with a total of £1.1 billion being paid out over the last decade. However, the council made it clear that their plan was to cover up the issues as quickly as possible when they arose to prevent further claims from being made. In other words, the council knew other workers were being underpaid but would rather brush the issue under the carpet!

The further £100 million bill to fix a failing IT system, Oracle, could also have been avoided by listening to trade unions and front-line workers when they raised concerns about the new system. Yet, this value does not capture the true cost of the failed system as countless hours of staff labour time have been lost fighting to complete basic payments and recruitment tasks. And that’s not to mention the £184m spent on the Commonwealth Games, while community sport and culture have been cut to the bone!

This crisis is also a result of a decade of underfunding. Since 2010, Birmingham’s funding from central government has been cut in half! When the Labour Party took control of the council in 2012, they could have set a no-cuts budget and started a mass campaign to demand more funding – much like the Liverpool Council in the 80s under the leadership of Militant (the Socialist Party’s predecessor). Instead, they implemented the Tory imposed cuts at the expense of their residents.

Now Birmingham’s residents, already living in one of England’s most deprived cities, will face further cuts and potentially council tax rises, as the council announces a freeze on all payments it deems “unessential”. Instead of demanding support from central government, council workers receive near-daily emails begging them to resign as part of the council’s “Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme”. The council has so far refused to share the details of this settlement with unions, so it’s fair to say it will likely be a rotten deal!

We need a mass campaign involving unions and community organisations to fight back against cuts to frontline services, to pay workers fairly, and to stop our city being run by unelected commissioners. The council still had £668.4m in reserves as of March this year, and extensive borrowing powers that could be used to buy time while fighting for the funding our city needs. Starmer is expecting to win the general election and we demand he pledges now that an incoming Labour government will reimburse all councils that have had to use borrowing powers to prevent cuts to jobs and services.

This crisis has come from a council with a Labour super majority. Therefore, it’s clearer than ever that working-class people need a party of our own.

This is why Socialist Party members will continue to stand in elections as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. We want to work with all genuine working-class forces to build the fightback against austerity in Birmingham, including standing as an alternative at the ballot box to capitalist parties that put profits before workers!

Public Meeting

Come to our open meeting to discuss how we can build a campaign to fight further attacks on jobs and public services and build a political alternative for working class people – all welcome!

7:30pm, Monday 2^nd October

Top floor, The Wellington

Bennetts Hill

Birmingham City Centre

B2 5SN

For more info/to join the Socialists, get in touch

0797 449 3525

birminghamsocialistparty@gmail.com

Instagram: @brumsocialistparty

Facebook: Birmingham Socialist Party

Twitter: @brumsocialists

Birmingham Council On The Brink – Fight For Services We Need

Since the following article was first published, Birmingham City Council has issued a “Section 114” notice. The closest a local council can come to bankruptcy, this will likely lead to further savage cuts to local services by the local Labour leadership alongside unelected commissioners appointed by central government. Already the council is effectively planning “redundancy on the cheap” for large sections of the workforce through “mutually agreed resignation”, with workers leaving the council to be replaced by staff on inferior pay and conditions or not at all.

Birmingham Socialist Party stands with council workers and working class communities in any campaigns that will emerge against further attempts to make workers pay through austerity.

Birmingham residents are in a state of uncertainty about the future of local government public services. Birmingham City Council has announced a financial ‘black hole’ of £870 million. The Labour council’s leadership claims a bill of £760 million to meet council workers’ equal pay claims. And £100 million to fix a failing IT system, which the council moved over to despite concerns raised by council staff and trade unions that it was not fit for purpose. The IT system has resulted in bills not being invoiced and staff and residents receiving delays in payments.

The council has frozen all ‘non-essential’ payments, threatening jobs and services. School transport for children with Special Education Needs and Disabilities has been cancelled, leaving these vulnerable children unable to get to school. The council evidently doesn’t consider this essential!

This year’s financial crisis is in stark contrast to last year’s Commonwealth Games, held in Birmingham, which cost the taxpayer £780 million with at least £250 million of that paid by the council. One year on and money which would supposedly be generated by this event is nowhere to be found, at least not in investment in public services or better pay for staff.

Funding needed

Rishi Sunak has said central government will not help bail Birmingham council out. Birmingham’s funding from central government since 2010 has been slashed by nearly half – or £750 million.

It is clear this crisis is the result of a decade of austerity.

The Labour council is instead trying to blame council workers who are asking for money which they are owed. This divide-and-conquer tactic of council workers vs the community is an attempt to hide the fact that for over a decade, the Labour council has implemented Tory austerity instead of fighting for the funding Birmingham needs.

If the Labour council is unwilling to fight for more funding, what Birmingham needs is a political voice for the working class that is prepared to fight. Candidates standing in elections on an anti-cuts platform offer an alternative to the status quo of making the working class pay with higher council taxes for worse or non-existent services. Socialist Party members have stood in elections in Birmingham on such a platform, alongside trade unionists and campaigners, as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.

We campaign to end the cuts and restore lost services, to use borrowing powers and reserves to ensure no cuts are carried out immediately and to fight with trade unions, community groups and council staff to fight for the funding required from central government.

Making Birmingham Pride Political

On Saturday 27 May Socialist Party members attended Birmingham Pride, with a campaign stall and LGBTQ+ focused leaflets. Despite being surrounded by corporate representatives and police officers, we received an overwhelmingly positive response. People recognised there needs to be a change.

‘Rainbow Capitalism’ has seeped into Pride events like a virus over the last couple of decades, after realising that the LGBTQ+ community was ripe for consumer exploitation. However, a good percentage of participants were receptive to our demands. From students to social workers and even members of banks’ parade floats showed support for socialism. We got 60 people signing our ‘Tories out’ petition, many wanted more information about joining the Socialist Party. We raised fighting fund and sold a number of copies of the Socialist, it was an extremely successful intervention.

We received shouts of encouragement and people literally running towards us to sign our petitions. People told us they are tired of Tory austerity and the ever-rising cost of living. LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately affected by poverty, unstable unemployment and housing, and healthcare restrictions. These factors seem to be taking a layer of LGBTQ+ people back to the radical origins of the movement. Speaking to people, they recognise the need for strike action and solidarity between oppressed minorities and the rest of the working class, and were receptive to our calls for a mass workers’ party.

The Socialist Party has recently issued an updated version of our LGBTQ+ Workers Charter. Read it here:

Read Our LGBTQ+ Charter

Labour Party HQ Imposes Regime Change in Birmingham

In the latest attempts to try and consolidate its total grip on the party, Labour HQ has imposed a regime change at the top of Birmingham City Council.

The Starmerite right wing in control of the Labour Party National Executive Committee used the publication of a report, criticising the atmosphere within the Labour group on Birmingham City Council, as being “toxic” to show former council leader Ian Ward the door.

In his place, John Cotton has been installed as the head of Europe’s largest local authority, on the basis of behind-closed-doors interviews with the Labour Party top brass. In a sign of Labour leader Keir Starmer and his associates’ contempt for democracy, they didn’t even seek to hold a vote among local councillors before telling Ward to resign and announcing Cotton as the heir apparent.

Never mind what’s left of local Labour Party branches after membership purges. The million people who live in the city, now only get to vote for their local councillor every four years following changes introduced to insulate councillors from criticism.

Not that Ian Ward, or the rest of Birmingham’s Labour councillors, have many enthusiastic supporters left in the city. Since Labour regained control of Birmingham in 2012 its councillors have unanimously voted for cuts to services totalling over £600 million. During this time Ward was first deputy leader of the council and then from late 2017 was overall leader.

He took charge that year following the first of two strikes by bin workers, in opposition to fire-and-rehire tactics being pioneered by the Labour council. The bin workers defeated these attempts to cut their pay and pensions, but not before the council spent £6 million hiring scabs to break the strike and taking the union to court!

Having not learned his lesson, Ward then attempted to cut the hours and pay of low-paid homecare workers, effectively making the job unliveable. As a result of the victorious 15-month strike campaign by these mainly women workers, open warfare broke out within the Labour group on the council. Though the outcry by some councillors centred on the tactics used by Ward and senior management in attacking the homecare workers, not on principled opposition to cuts. The 23 councillors who signed an open letter of protest to a man and woman voted for cuts in the years before and after both strikes!

According to reports, the recriminations from the homecare and bin strikes were a critical factor in the row between different factions of Labour councillors in Birmingham, along with unspecified allegations of racism, misogyny and bullying.

With John Cotton having been part of the pro-cuts council cabinet for the last six years, there’s unlikely to be a change of direction under his leadership. Already failings with the rollout of a new IT system are seeing council workers underpaid, with the cost of the system ballooning five times over to £100 million likely to be used as a justification for further cuts and underinvestment down the line.

Rather than a revolving door of career politicians, working-class Brummies need councillors who will take on the political establishment locally and in Westminster, to fight for the funding for decent jobs, homes and public services in the city. Socialist Party members are campaigning as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition to ensure that at the next elections in 2026 there’s the widest possible challenge at the ballot box to the likes of Ward, Cotton and all the other councillors responsible for running down our city over the last decade.

Standing For The Working Class

While Starmer’s Labour seeks to position itself as the party of big business and law and order, many workers and young people will be wondering who they can vote for that will advance their interests – starting with this May’s local elections.

That’s why over 260 Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates are standing in council and mayoral contests across England. These include Socialist Party members alongside other working class activists who see the need for building a socialist alternative to the three establishment parties.


Though there’s no council elections in Birmingham itself this time, we’ve been busy campaigning in neighbouring councils including Solihull, Bromsgrove, Sandwell, Dudley, Wolverhampton and Coventry.

Can you help spread the word about our Socialist challenge to the red, blue and yellow tories? Between now and polling day we’ll be out delivering leaflets, canvassing and speaking to local residents every day.

For more information on how you can help our people powered campaign, including donating to fund the cause, just get in touch.

We’ll also be holding public meetings, where anyone who’s interested in hearing about why we’re standing and how a new mass workers party can be built can come down and join the debate:


Bearwood
7pm, Monday 24^th April

Upstairs function room, The Bear Tavern

500 Bearwood Road B66 4BX

Dudley

7pm, Tuesday 25th April

Castlegate Church Cafe

Birdcage Walk (next to Farmfoods)

Dudley Town Centre DY2 7AE

Bromsgrove
12pm, Saturday 29th April

Bromsgrove Baptist Church

New Road B60 2JD

Lyndon

7pm, Tuesday 2nd May

The Lyndon Pub

Barn Lane,

Solihull B92 7LY

Promoted by Nick Hart at 342 Highfield Lane, Birmingham B32 1SD 

National Express Drivers Win!

After just six days of strike action, National Express West Midlands bus drivers have won a 16.2% pay rise. This begins to reverse years of declining real wages.

The deal also includes an improvement to overtime rates being made permanent, an increase in the length of accident pay and improved rates for some public holiday working.

The way in which Unite members showed rock solid support for the strike in the face of management pressure and at some garages having the police called on the picket line is a credit to the workforce at NXWM.

As one driver at West Brom put it, “management never thought we’d go on strike – they got a nasty surprise”.

The success of the strike in winning a pay rise well beyond what the company were originally willing to give puts down a platform to win future improvements to pay, working conditions and rostering agreements.

The momentum from the current dispute can’t be lost as a chance to strengthen the union.A renewed committee of garage and route reps to talk through the shared issues across the company, along with regular meetings in the garages to hear from and feed back to the membership is the best way to hold management to any commitments made.

By taking one week of action, bus drivers have succeeded in emptying out a number of town and city centres around the region, showing their vital role in keeping the local services and businesses running. The fact that National Express alone has lost millions in revenue per strike day shows the money that drivers generate for the company every time they show up for work!

The victory of bus drivers will be an inspiration to workers across the West Midlands currently struggling for a living pay rise. Commenting on the number of beeping horns from posties and bin workers on the picket at Yardley Wood, one driver put it best: “everyone’s feeling the pinch – everyone should go on strike!”