The decade-long saga of equal pay reviews continues to disrupt relations between councils and their employees. It is the background reason for the prolonged binmen's dispute in Leeds. The city's pay review resulted in 460 refuse and street-cleaning staff having their pay cut. And it's a fair assumption most of those people were men. Overall, more women than men got pay rises among the 23,000-strong Leeds workforce. Unison claims 40% of councils have yet to complete pay reviews, more than two years after the original deadline. Councils say they have to have regard for taxpayers as well as their employees. Leeds has been without proper refuse and recycling services for a least two months. The industrial turmoil is taking place against a complex political background. By 18 seats, Labour are the largest party, but the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives combined outnumber them. The council leader is a Liberal Democrat, Richard Brett, with Tory Andrew Carter described as the ‘alternate leader'. The council reckons that, post the equal pay review, the cost of guaranteeing current earnings for the refuse workers would mean also putting up the pay of all equivalents. The council's way out of the impasse is to ask the binmen to empty 220 bins an hour. The unions say the average hourly collection is 192. The long-term impact of the resolution of this dispute is important, not only for the residents of Leeds, who want their rubbish cleared, but also for the credibility of the Lib Dems in the North. They regularly point to the fact that they have the leadership of many great northern cities including Newcastle, Hull, Sheffield and Liverpool. With ‘savage cuts' on the way across the nation, similar industrial disputes must be a real possibility in those places too.
