Coventry: Cost of city's six-month bin strike revealed

Bin lorry drivers held demonstrations in the city during the dispute

Coventry City Council spent £5m on extra bin collections during a six-month pay dispute with lorry drivers.

The dispute, which ended last week, saw bin lorry drivers staging an all-out strike on 31 January.

Figures show that up to £3m was also lost in income from affected commercial waste pick-ups, but £3.5m was made in savings, mostly from unpaid salaries.

The overall net cost to the authority was about £4.5m, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands.

The strike concluded on 29 July after the Unite union said a pay rise for the drivers worth up to 12.9% - an estimated £3,600 per year - had been agreed with the authority.

The deal also included Christmas bonuses worth some £4,000, the union said.

The Labour-run council said on Monday that the 12.9% was not a blanket rise, but a consequence of allowing drivers to work Saturdays.

Council leader George Duggins said the authority would have faced costs of up to £30m per year in equal pay claims in the medium to long term, if they had agreed to pay drivers on a higher grade.

Moving staff from Grade 5 to 6 was a demand made by the workers, but this was not part of the deal agreed on Friday.

Mr Duggins said it was important to have kept collections going during the industrial action by sub-contracting driver jobs to Tom White waste employees.

"The important thing is we didn't have the kind of wholesale rubbish on the streets that would have had disastrous consequences for public health," he told the LDRS.

"It's not expenditure we wanted to have to spend, but the alternative would have been unacceptable."

Mr Duggins disputed Unite's claim that the deal was a "win" for drivers and said "the offers were on the table in January".

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