Stop your trash talk, Coventry Council – get workers off breadline wages

I live and work in Coventry. I’m proud to raise my family here and call this city my home. But I’ve also been on strike since January, and I need to tell you why.

I’m a licensed HGV driver at the council, responsible for removing the rubbish. It’s demanding work, but I take real pride in helping to look after our city.

For this, our rate starts just above £11 per hour and heads to just over £14 per hour after many years of service. It’s a far cry from what the council claims we’re paid – at one point, the council was claiming we were earning £52,163 a year! – and well below what is being paid to workers brought in, disgracefully, to break the strike.

Like everybody, I’ve got a mortgage to pay and bills that keep rising. Even with my wife and I both working, we are really struggling and with soaring energy bills, rocketing inflation and a tax rise in April, we’ve got nothing more to cut back on. Work at this council simply does not pay, and that is not right. 

My colleagues feel the same. They love their city, and are so proud of the jobs they do, but their families are suffering. They struggle to meet their mortgages or rents, or heat their homes, and savings have disappeared.

From the start, Coventry Council has attacked us in the press. They’ve misled the public about a new offer that never materialised, have lied about us not attending ACAS talks and have hid behind a ‘job review’ in order to string out this dispute.

This is the stuff of Donald Trump conduct – smears and lies, dividing us from our neighbours, and from a Labour council, too. It is astonishing to see elected and highly paid Labour officials conduct themselves in this way, taking to Twitter to denounce its own workforce.

Sick to death of this trash talk, we’ve produced a document that we are calling ‘The Truth’, so that we can set the record straight in our community. Please do read it and make your own mind up.

Going out on strike is never an easy decision: it puts huge strain on our loved ones and is always a last resort. But when your skills are not recognised and you’re paid a pittance, there really is nothing to lose by taking a stand.

Coventry council will not pay us HGV drivers a proper rate for the job. They won’t even work with us to find a way forward.  Instead they’d rather waste taxpayers’ money hiring agency workers on £20 an hour to break our strike than get its own bin workers off breadline wages.

Council boss Martin Reeves takes home £229,000 in pay and pension. He’s not fretting about bills dropping on the mat. But me and my colleagues are, every minute of the day – and we refuse to live like this.

The Labour council at Coventry could end this strike now. Take a leaf out of Plymouth Council’s book. They worked with Unite to lift wages after recognising that HGV bin drivers have been underpaid and undervalued for years. We’re not asking for the moon, just a fair day’s wage and dignity at work.  Everyone can understand that.

Tonight, Wednesday 9th February, we will join an online rally with our general secretary Sharon Graham.  Sharon nailed it when she said that the council’s approach to this dispute is “shameful”. I urge Coventry councillors to tune in and hear for themselves the struggle this workforce has just to get by, then do the decent thing – get around the table and get this solved.

If you feel like we do – that no Labour council should be paying poverty wages – please join our rally, or head to unitetheunion.org/CovBinStrike to find out more.