Yes, as Wes Streeting says, it is ‘unacceptable’ for rubbish to be left piling up on the streets of Birmingham as the binmen go on strike. But neither he nor all the other government figures complaining about the strike should forget its cause. It is the fallout of Birmingham City Council going bust as a result of an equal pay claim brought by cleaners who complained they were not paid as much as binmen. It was a case based on the principle of ‘work of equal value’. It is not case of men and women working alongside each other in the same jobs being paid different rates; rather it is a case of an employment tribunal deciding that cleaners’ jobs and binmen’s jobs constitute ‘work of equal value’ and – given that cleaning is an occupation dominated by women and emptying bins is dominated by men – that it is therefore discriminatory to pay the former less than the latter.
The open-ended liability created by the concept of ‘work of equal value’ was clear when I wrote
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