A pungent smell of rotting garbage fills the air. Bulging sacks of trash pile high, some spilling their festering contents. And, with vermin plaguing parts of the city, at least one resident has claimed to have been bitten by a rat.
With its heritage as a manufacturing powerhouse and its proud civic history, Birmingham likes to call itself Britain’s second city.
Right now, it’s the nation’s garbage capital.
A standoff between striking refuse workers and city officials has left an estimated 17,000 tons of trash piled on city streets that is attracting rats, foxes, cockroaches and maggots. On Monday, Birmingham’s municipality declared it a “major incident,” which allows it to access more resources from the government and other nearby regions.
Some garbage collections are still taking place and the city has managed to keep many areas, including the center, clear of trash. But in several residential districts and parks it was highly conspicuous on Wednesday.
In Small Heath, a neighborhood two miles from the city center, black plastic bags had piled up at the end of some streets, and people from other areas had added to the mess by dumping their uncollected garbage.
“I have lived in England for 36 years. I have never seen a situation like this before,” said Javad Javadi, 51, a delivery driver who is originally from Iran, as he walked past overflowing plastic trash bins that lined Malmesbury Road.
“Of course, at night time, if you come after 10 o’clock you see many rats,” he said. “So many that the cats don’t chase them.”
Birmingham’s garbage pileup has caused a political stink in Britain’s Parliament where Jim McMahon, a minister from the governing Labour Party, warned of public health risks, and one Birmingham lawmaker, Preet Kaur Gill, said a constituent had written to say “that they had been bitten by a rat.”
An opposition lawmaker, Julian Lewis, compared the situation to an infamous 1978 garbage collection strike during industrial unrest under the Labour government of James Callaghan. The period became known as the “winter of discontent,” and the following year Labour lost a general election, ushering Margaret Thatcher into power.
This dispute, however, is confined to Birmingham, where more than 350 workers began limited walkouts in January that last month escalated into an indefinite full-scale strike.
“We cannot tolerate a situation that is causing harm and distress to communities,” Birmingham City Council leader, John Cotton, said in a statement.
Trade union members claim that a restructuring plan pushed by the municipality would leave around 150 workers up to £8,000 (about $10,400) a year poorer. The council disputes this, saying that “the number of staff that could lose the maximum amount (just over £6,000) is 17 people.”
While the two sides remain deadlocked, the results were evident in Malmesbury Road where black plastic bags were heaped at both ends of the street and in an alleyway halfway down. Some despairing residents had begun taking their trash to the dump.
As he loaded around 20 sacks into his car, Shakeel Ahmed explained that garbage had accumulated for three weeks outside his home and in his garden shed.
Driving to a waste facility, Mr. Ahmed, 69, a retired train manager, kept the windows open and apologized for the smell in his car, adding that he would have it professionally cleaned after depositing the trash. “If I get angry it is not going to solve the problem,” he said, philosophically.
At the refuse and recycling center in Tyseley, a few miles southeast of the city center, others had a similar story about the stench, the vermin and the damage to the city’s reputation.
“We can’t open the window because of the smell, it’s rubbish everywhere — it’s ridiculous,” said Rubina Yaqoob, 43, describing the situation in Stechford, in east Birmingham. Her vehicle is new and she had lined its trunk with a sheet before loading it with 10 bags of trash. “Look at my car!” she said, pointing to the mess the garbage had made.
Some don’t have this option, including Robert Shaw, 60, a school cleaner, who has found himself living next to a mounting pile of refuse bags at Henshaw Road. “What the council said to us is that we can take it to Tyseley,” he said. “But if you haven’t got a car, how are you supposed to take it?”
The crisis has forced some city dwellers to be inventive. Sitting in the sunshine in Morris Park, waiting to collect her three children from school, Tasnima Tafader recounted how her husband had called relatives to find space in their bins for some of the family’s garbage. His mother came through.
Then, when a refuse truck arrived around 7:30 a.m. one morning, residents came out of their homes to load bags from the street into the truck, said Ms. Tafader, 34, an interpreter.
At another depot in Tyseley, strikers gathered at the gates in front of departing refuse trucks, delaying their journeys by walking in front of them at a snail’s pace for several hundred yards.
Lee Haven, a member of the Unite trade union, disputed the city’s claim that no worker “need lose any money,” arguing that planned changes could cost some £600 a month at a time when household bills are rising sharply.
The origins of the dispute lie in 2023 when Birmingham City Council declared itself essentially bankrupt, partly as a result of equal pay cases brought by workers, and began to implement far-reaching cuts to services.
As part of a restructuring plan, the municipality now wants to scrap one position on refuse teams, known as the waste recycling and collection officer, which it says does not exist in other municipalities. Workers in that role can take voluntary redundancy or move to another position.
It says that simplifying the pay structure is crucial and keeping the role would risk “creating a huge future equal pay liability,” but declined requests to explain exactly why.
“There is a feeling we are being made a scapegoat,” Mr. Haven said, as around 10 police officers looked on. “I think the normal working class family in this country will understand that nobody can afford to take that £600 loss.”
Even as they bemoan the state of their streets, some city dwellers sympathize with the refuse collectors.
“I don’t blame them because I don’t think their wages should be cut,” said Zeenat Hussain, 53, a health service administrator from Saltley. “What they are doing is an essential job.”
