'Mountain of waste' if Bolton binmen vote for action (From This Is Lancashire)

'Mountain of waste' if Bolton binmen vote for action

8:51am Thursday 9th September 2010 in

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BOLTON’S binmen will vote on whether to take industrial action, which they say would lead to “mountains of waste”

being left in the streets.

In their latest row over pay and conditions, staff will be balloted next week about working to rule, which they say will lead to thousands of bins remaining uncollected.

Last night, council chiefs said they were unaware of any ballot being held and declined to comment on the refuse collectors’ claims.

The binmen are angry because the pay and grading review, which will see some binmen lose thousands per year from their salary, comes into effect next month.

They say since agreeing to the review, their workload has increased because of a reorganisation of bin rounds.

If they vote for a work-torule arrangement, it will effectively mean sticking to 37-hour-a-week contracts which have specific conditions for taking lunch and rest breaks.

Many bin crews say they work through their lunch breaks because returning to the depot for a sandwich would mean hundreds of bins per day are left uncollected.

Tony Cowell, the Unison rep for Bolton’s binmen, said: “It was agreed that we ballot all members about working a 37-hour week.

“This would be the first time, to my knowledge, in Bolton that binmen would clock on in a morning and clock off in the afternoon.

“At the moment, we stay until our rounds are complete but the council keeps piling more work on us so the only thing that task and finish encourages is unsafe working practices.”

Workers claim the new rounds, which were also introduced to balance out routes, are still seeing some crews finish at 1pm while others are not finishing their collections until hours later.

Last month, Town Hall chiefs revealed that about one per cent of bins, roughly 1,200, were being left uncollected per week — the same rate as before the modernisation of the rounds.

But one binman, who did not want to be named, said residents would see “mountains” of waste if they were to work to rule.

He said: “People always blame the binmen but the fact is that we are having our wages slashed but being made to collect more bins."

There are about 120 refuse collectors in Bolton earning an average of £18,000 per year. This is being cut to about £14,000 under the review, the bin men say.

A council spokesman said: “We haven’t been officially notified by the unions of any intention to ballot members.”