John CRAWFORD He’s old school and we’re proud of it
Pouring fuel on the fi re is never a great idea for bosses
IT is not my place to comment on the Birmingham industrial dispute, which has left tonnes of household waste piled up in the streets (as I’m not aware of the full facts).
I do know, however, that if anything convinces the public just how essential their regular waste collection service is, then there’s nothing like a strike to get the message home.
I was very lucky as when I went to Hamilton in 1987 and Inverness in 1993, that my predecessors had Cleansing Services performing at levels which ensured there was no chance of us losing the work to the private sector (a consequence of the Thatcher Government’s Compulsory Competitive Tendering legislation).
There’s nothing like a strike to get the message home.
At East Ayrshire, the task was combining two former District Council Services to get them working as effi ciently as possible.
It isn’t easy developing household waste collection rounds. For decades there’s been a tradition of ‘task and fi nish’ in many Councils.
When management propose new rounds, the workforce will try to get the workload reduced: it’s human nature after all.
It has to be seen against a culture where, even if management think they’ve allocated a fair day’s work, crews will
invariably rush round the route and curtail their lunch breaks to get back in the depot with an hour to spare - just to prove management wrong!
But it has to be recognised collection round tonnages vary with the seasons, and there are days when - despite the most atrocious weather conditions - crews have still to complete their allocated work.
In disputes, there needs to be a bit of mutual respect and understanding on both sides. It helps if management has been properly trained and qualifi ed in the waste industry (CIWM Corporate Membership is essential).
Today however, there’s a trend for Councils to have a small number of very large multi-disciplinary Departments, where a Director might know nothing about the cleansing department, and (worse still) be tempted to make public statements which make matters worse.
I always took the view if you hadn’t been out with a collection crew (especially in a downpour, strong winds, or heavy snow), it was better to bite your tongue. Making point-scoring statements to the media, which focus on public health issues rather than the dispute, is not a great idea.
Of course everybody forgets this after everything is resolved, and both sides have to get back to working together. So infl ammatory remarks aren’t helpful.
One peculiar aspect of strikes by waste collection crews is that after the dispute is settled, the Councils often have to pay them overtime to collect the backlog of waste.
It sticks in the public’s craw, as the overtime payments are sometimes equal to or greater than the wages lost.
I once had a situation where a staff Trade Union was exploiting the traditional attitudes of employees who came from former deep mining communities. Our crews wouldn’t cross any picket line (irrespective of the nature of the dispute), and the staff worked out that if two or three of them picketed the gates of our depot, there’d be no refuse collection that day.
After a series of ‘staff days of action,’ I told crews if they weren’t prepared to clear up the backlog in their own time, I wasn’t paying them overtime to do it and I’d use street sweepers to do the work if they refused.
Surprisingly, the next time we got wind of a staff picket our crews were out an hour early, and were long gone before the picket arrived!
JOHN trained at Saltcoats Burgh in the late 60s. After a decade he moved to PD Beatwaste Ltd/ Wimpey Waste Management Ltd. He then joined the Civil Engineering Dept at Strathclyde University before posts at Renfrew, Hamilton, Inverness and East Ayrshire Councils.
A Fellow of CIWM, he served on its Scottish Centre Council from 1988- 2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland and was their President between 1991-92.
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SHM September, 2017
www.skiphiremagazine.co.uk
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