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Birmingham City Council says it is on track to clear a backlog of uncollected waste by the weekend, despite the ongoing dispute with the Unite union.
Craig Cooper, strategic director of city operations, said collections would focus first on “the poorest parts” of the city “affected the most” by the ongoing bin strike.
Mr Cooper said the amount of uncollected waste had peaked at 22,000 tonnes, but he expected to be back to “one household collection every week” for all residents by the weekend.
Hundreds of bin workers began an all-out strike on 11 March, in a standoff with the Labour-run council that has led to bin bags and fly-tipped rubbish piling up on streets.
The city’s residents are caught in the middle of the dispute, and many have told the BBC of their increasing frustrations, with one saying it “can’t go on”.
Striking workers held a rally on Tuesday morning, a day after Unite union members rejected the city council’s latest pay offer.
The dispute centres around the council’s decision to remove Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) roles from some bin workers.
On Monday, workers voted to reject the council’s latest offer, which Unite said was “totally inadequate” and also did not address potential pay cuts for 200 drivers.
A council spokesperson said the offer was fair and included options for affected workers.
Many Brummies have stepped forward to help each other out during the strikes, with neighbours sharing trips to the tip and volunteer litter-pickers seeing their work increase.
Haroon Hassan, who was collecting bin bags from residents and carrying them to a mobile waste centre in Small Heath on Tuesday said: “Where we can help people out, we should help out. That’s just being a good citizen, a good member of the community.”
During the strike, the council has been running mobile collections where bin trucks park at a fixed location in a neighbourhood for a morning, so people can bring along their rubbish.
Violet Williams, a Small Heath resident who was using the waste centre, said she felt “awful” when she saw photos of bin bags piling up on the city’s streets, which have made headlines around the world.
Samuel Yates, a bin worker, said the strike aimed to protect people’s existing wages, not get them a pay rise.
Bin workers at the rally stressed that they were not on strike in order to get a pay rise but in order to protect their existing roles and wages.
National government ministers have also voiced concerns over the situation in the UK’s second largest city.
The union said its workers were striking in order to prevent pay cuts, not in a bid to get more money than they currently receive.
“Our members would like nothing better than to be able to call off the strike and get back to work,” said Onay Kasab, Unite national lead officer. “But as things stand, we still have people who are going to be facing huge pay cuts as a result of this.”
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