‘Dot Cotton could do better’ amid council crisis

Angry protesters greeted Birmingham City councillors ahead of last night’s ‘extraordinary’ meeting as the authority looks to navigate itself out of their £1 billion crisis

Ashley Preece - Local Democracy Reporter | Wednesday 27th September 2023 8:01am

Another meeting at Birmingham’s crisis-hit council house bore witness to another mass protest outside as trade unions and workers hit out at impending cuts. The council is effectively bankrupt with council leader John Cotton detailing how “the road ahead will be extremely challenging”.

The authority is around £1 billion in the red due to equal pay liabilities arising from differences in salary between men and women doing similar roles. There’s also the £100m fee needed to fix its doomed IT system Oracle, while the Government has appointed commissioner Max Caller to issue an urgent recovery plan that will see services cut and assets sold.

Trade unions are demanding a new job evaluation scheme aimed at ending the issue of equal pay once and for all. They want to see the council adopt a scheme recommended by the National Joint Council (NJC) – a negotiating body made up of unions and local government employers. They say it is the “gold standard” and is used by many other authorities around the country.

Speaking at a protest this week, Lee Wiggetts Clinton, from the union Unite, said: “Just look around, people are shoulder-to-shoulder and it shows solidarity. It shows we’re here to fight. We’re not going to stand back, we’re not going to let faceless bureaucrats come in and dictate to our members, dictate to the employees of the council and dictate to the public of what buildings they’re going to sell off. These buildings belong to the public and to our members who work in Birmingham City Council.

“We cannot stand back and let them dictate. One message to these lot; if you want a fight, bring it on. We will bring in numbers and we’ll fight. Let’s stay strong, come together and all we’re asking for is a simple system to work to end the equal pay issue once and for all. All we’re asking for is a job evaluation process which is proven up and down the country. Just give us what we want and we can end this.”

GMB senior organiser Stuart Richards accused the council of not being straight about when it knew about the extent of the equal pay issue. He said: “We knew at the end of 2021 and, in 2022, we sat down with council officers and told them what the liability was.

“Since 2017, we’ve been trying to get these people to sit down and work with us on an agreed job evaluation scheme. They even agreed a £3 million budget to get it last year. They’ve done nothing. It’s not our fault, it’s their fault.

“The simple fact is the workers who deliver frontline services, the workers who keep this council going are the workers who have been underpaid systematically for years through discrimination. They won’t fix it, we will. If they don’t fix it, we’ll be back.”

Kay Green, who works as a day centre officer at Birmingham City Council, was worried over the potential loss of valuable services for children. She raged: “I work at a day centre with my daughter who has learning disabilities; vulnerable services this city relies on, that our parents and carers rely on. They need to go out there and do their jobs. They can’t do that if there’s no-one to look after their loved ones.

“We don’t want commissioners coming in and selling our day centres just to make cuts for something they’ve caused. We will not stand for this any longer.”

Dave Room, from Birmingham’s National Education Union branch, had a message for Coun Cotton. He said: “Our members in the schools in the city are not going to be directly affected. School money is safe but that isn’t good enough for us as a trade union.

“We’re worried about the wraparound services we provide for kids being undermined. We also worry about the youth services and youth clubs as well. All of these things are absolutely crucial for the young people of this city.

“It’s an absolute disgrace this council can’t manage its own funds and own organisation. It’s caused a problem and it needs to sort the problem out and this has been going on for well over ten years.

“We say no more cuts, no more job losses, no more sell-off. We’re not going to allow it. I don’t know how the council can say, ‘We never knew, nobody told me, Gov!’ – are we really expected to believe that Albert Bore didn’t know, Ian Ward didn’t know, John Cotton didn’t know, or Dot Cotton… Dot Cotton could do a better job! Let’s get Dot Cotton in from EastEnders. Bring her back!

“But this debt is increasing minute-by-minute, week-by-week, month-by-month and it’s going up £10m a month while they procrastinate and tell us they’re going to cut our services. We need to be here at every meeting they put on and outside every Birmingham building they will try to sell off. We’ll also be outside every service that they try to shut down.”

Addressing those in attendance protesting last night, Unison’s regional secretary Ravi Subramanian added: “Well done for coming out. It’s really important we send a strong message to the council, to the government and to the commissioners to say our council services are not for sale and we’ll be fighting against any of the cuts in our communities.

“The reason the commissioners are in Birmingham is not because of any care workers, bin workers or council workers – it’s because the government has cut over £1 billion of Birmingham’s budget over the past ten years due to austerity.

“We’ve got to make sure our communities don’t suffer and our workers don’t suffer. We’re going to have to stand together on this. It wasn’t our members that caused this problem. It’s going to be a long battle and we’ve got to stick together.”

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