Ed James
BBC Radio WM

Steve, who is part of the men's wellbeing group that meets at the centre in Castle Vale, says he is "fed up" with the strike.

"Carboard is the one thing I have an issue with."

"You can take it to the tip, but who wants to do that every week? So what I’ve been doing is burning it in the incinerator in the back garden, it’s the only way I can get rid of it."

"I’ve been recycling since I was 15 years old and I’m 75 now, and it really goes against the grain," says Ken, another member of the group.

"Birmingham, now they have stopped recycling, they’ve taken us back to the 1970s when everything used to go in the same bin."

He said to resolve the dispute, he would "sack all the senior managers" at the authority as "that would save some money".

"The current CEO of Birmingham City Council's salary is £295,000 per year, I wonder if with this reorganisation, she would be willing to take a 25% pay cut, along with the 12 other senior managers."

Josh Sandiford
BBC News, West Midlands

Patricia Kendall, 77, expects to make not one but TWO visits to waste sites to drop off her rubbish today.

The self-described "bag lady" said that after coming to the mobile centre here in Edgbaston she will later go to a tip in the city to drop off her recycling.

It is because she lives in a block of flats and her bins are “chockablock”, but she says she doesn’t feel angry about the situation.

"It is what it is," she said, "I wish they’d get it sorted out - I just want to recycle."

She added she was on holiday in Australia earlier this year and Birmingham’s bin strike featured on the news down under.

"But they love stories about how bad Britain is," She joked. "They just adore stories like that.

"It is a bit of a joke but it’s serious for the guys that are on strike."

Ed James
BBC Radio WM

Claire is at the centre in Castle Vale today, making Halloween decorations for a party there later in October.

"They need to come and empty the recycling bins, I’m fed up of it," she told BBC Radio WM.

She says she is in a family of five and has children with additional needs.

"The bins are all overflowing and it's just mess everywhere, I’m trying to get rid of a lot of stuff and we can't.

"Maybe we take the council tax off and not pay it."

Sharon is also at the craft session, and says she is "disgusted" that the strike is still happening.

"Because I’m disabled I have to get my ex to take the bins down," she says.

"I have to rely on someone to take my bins for me and it’s not fair, really.

"I can’t do it, not with my disabilities, so he comes and there’s so much in the garden."

She says people dump rubbish outside her back gate.

"We need to get it sorted."

BBC Radio WM

BBC Radio WM listeners have been getting in touch with the station with their views on the strike.

Richard in Wolverhampton writes: "The reputation of Birmingham (and the wider West Midlands) isn't in the bin. Sure, there are problems, but far from all are of the city and region's making.

"It was central government, not local authorities that changed the funding formula that starved Birmingham (and other urban areas) of funding whilst country shires received increases. We aren't perfect but we are a far more pleasant region to live in than London, Manchester and many other regions in this country."

From Hubcap in Erdington: "On our estate we have to litter pick for a couple of hours what has been dropped after the dust men/ladies have been.

"We have not had to do this once after the agency teams have been. Please thank these heroes as they are doing a much better job than the normal teams."

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the workers were "resolute" in their determination to continue taking industrial action.

She said the dispute was affecting Unite's relationship with the Labour Party and the government.

Image source, PA Media

Unite is facing legal action over the dispute and Ms Graham said if the union was fined, the money would be paid out of its Labour affiliation fund, which it uses to support the party.

"Our members are resolute in their determination to win this dispute and are disgusted at the behaviour of the Labour council and the Labour government."

Unite said hundreds of its members faced pay cuts of up to £8,000 a year, adding that the council had spent millions of pounds hiring agency workers to collect rubbish.

The council insisted it had to make changes to its refuse collection service to make it more efficient.

A rally in support of the strikers will be held in the city on 20 September.

Adam Pinder-Smith
Reporter, BBC Radio WM

Birmingham City Council announced changes to waste collection services in Birmingham, including an alternate fortnightly collections for recycling and household waste, in January.

Currently, general waste is being largely collected but residents have not had recycling collected since January. Some say they have resorted to putting it in with their general waste with others saying they take it in to work.

The BBC has conducted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request into recycling rates:

Between 1 January 2024 and 30 June 2024, 43,864 tonnes of waste was recycled - this represents 22.17% of overall waste.

During this time, 6,419 tonnes was sent to landfill - that's 2.84% of overall waste.

Comparatively, between 1 January 2025 and 30 June 2025, 24,071 tonnes was recycled - representing 13.24% of overall waste.

In this time, 13,781 tonnes was sent to landfill - which accounts for 5.8% of waste.

Image source, Reuters

"We know the city's recycling rates need to improve which is why the improved waste collection service will introduce an extra recycling bin," said Birmingham City Council.

"Due to industrial action we have had to suspend the kerbside recycling collection but in order to support residents to recycle as much as possible we extended the opening hours of our household recycling centres and the mobile waste centres, with the latter focusing on hotspot areas.

"The council remains committed to our carbon reduction ambitions, though the city will achieve this through a range of activities beyond recycling such as retrofitting projects, support for businesses to become more energy efficient and improving the electric vehicle charging network."

When the BBC asked about the remaining materials, the authority referred to the waste hierarchy, external.

It said: "This emphasises the importance of minimising waste as a first priority and then reusing (or repairing) what we can, followed by recycling and composting (as the next best thing) and then recovering some energy from rubbish, with landfill (disposal) being the worst outcome."

"These materials which cannot be prevented from being included in waste, cannot be re-used, cannot be recycled are then sent to other recovery to generate electricity for 70,000 homes in Birmingham. With the worst option being to send to landfill without energy recovery."

Strikes by Birmingham bin workers in 2017 were equally as disruptive, but lasted nowhere near as long as the current one.

That seven-week dispute was over restructuring plans.

It ended with an agreement from the council that certain posts would not be made redundant and union officials in return recommended staff considered accepting rota changes.

Image source, PA Media

There was also a dispute in 2019 when Unite claimed members of the GMB union were given larger "conciliatory payments" at the resolution of the 2017 dispute.

The GMB union said this was because its members did not take part in the strike and the extra payments were because they had been left out of conciliatory talks.

That dispute ended the following month when a financial settlement was agreed to satisfy Unite members.

Ed James
BBC Radio WM

Councillor Ray Goodwin, Labour councillor for Castle Vale, says the community in his ward have worked "really, really hard" to keep the streets there clean.

"Some of that is about partnership work with the city council," he says, referring to the authority giving the Pioneer Group tip passes to help with clean-ups and fly tipping.

"Our community has come together. We have community litter picking groups who go out weekly… I go with them, we collect 15, 20 bags a week, every week," he said.

"Every four to five weeks, the mobile household recycling centre comes… yesterday we had over a thousand visitors to that.

"What I’m seeing is people actually engaging and understanding where we are, understanding times are a bit difficult, but also actually doing their bit as well."

Ed James
BBC Radio WM

Former mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street says Birmingham's reputation is being damaged every day by the strikes, and the headlines around it.

"There’s people thinking about where they’re going to come and spend their weekend, you look at our hotel occupancy numbers... they're not good at the moment," he said.

"We talk about where people are putting on conferences, we’re not doing as well as we were - so it does make a difference to people’s choices, and ultimately that affects the economy, so it affects the affluence of people here in the medium and long-term."

He said the "pressing priority" was settling the dispute.

"Please, please come back .We can’t solve this until both sides come together and are willing to compromise," he told BBC Radio WM.

"I would never say I’m walking away and I’m not coming back, I would keep the door open for those conversations."

Ed James
BBC Radio WM

Workers from the Pioneer Group at the Sanctuary community hub in Castle Vale say they've been working eight hours a day to keep their local area rubbish-free.

Flies and maggots were a particular problem, they said, adding: "We see a lot of rats, we've started naming them."

Josh Sandiford
BBC News, West Midlands, reporting from Edgbaston

David Hewitt, 59, from Moseley, told me it feels like the strike has lasted a lot longer than six months.

He is on the side of the striking bin workers but says he has had to come to the mobile bin lorry because he can’t get his bins emptied.

He said his collections were still not regular but this was better than going to the “awkward” Kings Norton tip.

He said the strike was not a good look for the city and he was fed up with paying his council tax to a “bankrupt” local authority that can’t deliver services.

“All we want is our bins emptied and not a lot else,” he added.

“The council is dysfunctional and doesn’t seem to be able to negotiate.“

Druids Heath councillor and leader of the Green Party at the city council, Julian Pritchard, said the continuing dispute was "absolutely outrageous".

"Residents expect basic services like bin collections to be happening in a way that they can depend on every week, and we had now six months of disrupted - at best - collections because of the industrial action.

"The city has stopped recycling because of this dispute," he added, "which is absolutely terrible".

"Some people, if they're able, are trying to do the right thing, trying to take it to the tip or trying to store it, but for a lot of people both of those options won't be possible.

"It's not just bad for the environment," he said, "the council will be losing money over this.

"That's another financial impact on top of everything else."

More waste was being burnt in an incinerator, he explained, "which is already out of date, inefficient and dirty".

Vanessa Pearce
BBC News, West Midlands

BBC Radio WM listener Charmaine sent us this video of Cavendish Road in Birmingham.

She took the footage last week, she said, adding the amount of rubbish was "shocking".

"Just so you know it's still a massive problem," she said.

You can send in your images or videos to :

·Email: bbcyourvoice@bbc.co.uk, external 

·WhatsApp: +44 7756 165803 , external 

·Upload your pictures and video  

Chloe Hughes
BBC News, West Midlands

Image source, Reuters

The dispute originally centred on Birmingham City Council's decision to remove Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) roles.

But why are Unite the Union so against this?

They said the WRCO role was important because it brought safety expertise to an "often dirty and dangerous job", citing the death of a Coventry bin worker last year.

Unite believes removing the role leaves the rest of the workforce "without a fair path for pay progression".

The city council said the WRCO role was not industry-standard and did not exist in other councils.

The authority also said it was not a role that could be reinstated without opening it up to a potential equal pay liability.

The change, the council said, was part of a waste collection service restructure, that aimed to improve the service and comply with the Environmental Act 2021.

Chloe Hughes
BBC News, West Midlands

Six months since the strike went all-out, is the end in sight?

At the moment, the answer appears to be no.

On 2 September, Unite said its members "overwhelmingly" voted to extend the industrial action to March 2026, which would mark a year since the all-out strike began.

Birmingham City Council said it had been "reasonable and flexible", but the service needed to be transformed to one residents deserved.

The union's general secretary, Sharon Graham, reiterated previous claims that government-appointed commissioners scuppered a deal that would have ended the dispute, adding that the "ball is in the government's court".

"Council workers are being lined up to pay the price for years of austerity," she added.

The government called on Unite to suspend the strike and work with the council to find a resolution.

Harris Khaliq has lived in the Ward End area of Birmingham for more than 30 years, says the past six months had been "absolute chaos" in the city.

"Residents have been paying more and receiving less," he said.

"I've never seen Ward End, in 34 years of my life, this bad," he added.

He reported seeing "rats as big as cats", claiming the council were unable to keep up with pest control services.

"What does this mean to a city that's full of rubbish that they can't even control the pests?"

The city council's website said it had temporarily suspended all pest control services except for rat treatments, which were currently free of charge.

The authority said it was currently just focusing on rats was done to “prioritise public health” during the industrial action.

Phil Mackie
BBC News Midlands Correspondent

Onay Kasab, national lead officer for unite the Union, said they had been close to a deal during Acas talks earlier in the year, and had left with a "ballpark agreement", before the council walked away.

He told the BBC that the government needed to step in and resolve the situation.

On 2 September, the government called on Unite to suspend the strike and work with the council to find a resolution.

“The nature of Acas talks means that you can’t come out and say what the detail was," he said.

“We want this dealt with now, our members do not want to be out on strike for a single day more.

"So we are prepared once again to sit down, any time, any place, anywhere… to sit down and negotiate."

He said members were going through hardship by being out on strike.

“Our members are making tremendous sacrifice by taking this action, but they know that they are taking that sacrifice now so that they are not taking a long-term sacrifice," he said.

“I’ve got members who are telling me now that they are having problems paying their rent and mortgage.”

Josh Tranter
BBC Radio WM, reporting from Small Heath

This is the scene in Camelot Way, Small Heath, this morning, where it's quite hard to walk down the pavement due to the fly-tipped rubbish.

It's affecting a stretch of the road about half the length of a football pitch.

There's anything and everything you can imagine - kettles, fridges, beds, wardrobes and scooters.

We've seen waste collections get better in the city over the past few months, but Camelot Way seems to be the exception.

Ifran Ali, who lives on the street, said: "It's terrible and it's not going away".

"It's right next to a school as well, so kids have to walk past this every day.

"The council do come and pick it up, but then people keep dumping rubbish here," he added.

CCTV footage showed van-loads of rubbish being dumped, sometimes in the middle of the night, he explained.

"Action needs to be taken against these people to stop this from happening," he said.

"The really sad thing is the council's depot is only about a mile from here, they could drive there and dump it there".

Kathryn Stanczyszyn
BBC political reporter, Birmingham

There have been moments in the past six months where a resolution to this dispute seemed within touching distance.

Those moments appear to be much further away. Birmingham City Council says it can no longer delay improvement changes - changes that will permanently downgrade the wagon driver role.

That means compulsory redundancies could be coming soon. Unite says it will fight on into 2026 after a process they say has been steered by government commissioners and not the council itself.

With an all-out council election next May, the clock is ticking.

Josh Sandiford
BBC News, West Midlands, reporting from Edgbaston

Anj Mohammed, from Kings Heath, also visited the mobile collection site in Cannon Park, Edgbaston, this morning.

The initial stages of the strike were a "nightmare," he said.

"I had to take my rubbish to my mum's house in Sandwell".

Collections had been improving, he added, "but there's still a long way to go".

"Our recycling isn't being touched, so it's a shame everything is being chucked in landfill."

He urged both sides to "come to some sort of agreement, just meet in the middle somewhere".