The Binmen of Birmingham
I was on the British CapX Podcast talking about the Equality Act, riffing off my two posts Equality Act 2010 and The Apples and Oranges Tribunal. One thing I discussed in the podcast which I haven’t blogged on is the amazing Birmingham dustbin dispute. In 2010 an employment tribunal ruled that Birmingham City Council had […] The post The Binmen of Birmingham appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION .
In a story from Birmingham, a striking tale unfolds regarding the city's dispute over binmen wages. In 2010, an employment tribunal found that Birmingham City Council had discriminated against female workers, including cooks, cleaners, care assistants, and caretakers, by denying them the bonuses paid to binmen, gardeners, and gravediggers.
The reason for the bonuses was the heavy, filthy, outdoor nature of the binmen's job, which commanded a premium due to the difficulty of attracting workers to such roles, a concept known as compensating differentials, as Adam Smith explained in 1776.
Initially, women could also become "binpersons," earning the same bonuses. However, as Birmingham City Council struggled financially, leading to bankruptcy in 2023, the council reduced binmen's wages, knowing the market wage for collecting rubbish remained unchanged. Consequently, the council cut the binmen's wages while still having to pay about fifteen pounds more to comparable female workers.
Despite the mounting financial burden, the council decided to terminate the binmen's wage premium in January 2025, sparking an 18-month-long strike by the binmen.
The situation took a turn when the city declared a major incident due to the piling up of 17,000 tonnes of rubbish. What was even more astonishing was that the council hired an outside contractor to take over the rubbish collection, paying roughly triple the pre-strike outsourcing bill, more than the amount they were previously spending on their own employees.
This surprising revelation revealed that the premium was not a favor to men but rather the inherent market wage necessary to attract workers to the job. The rubbish was piling up, and the post highlighted the fact that the rubbish piles up, demonstrating the failure of the initial approach.
The government officials, recognizing the issue, are now attempting to close the "loophole" that allowed for this regulatory arbitrage, adding more bureaucratic requirements to push equal pay madness up the supply chain. The story of the binmen of Birmingham serves as a testament to the complexities and unintended consequences of equal pay regulations when applied to specific job roles.
Written by urgent.news from Marginal Revolution's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
