Union dismisses Starmer's desperate plea to 'get round the table' and end Birmingham bin strike crisis as fury mounts at Labour council

Keir Starmer's hopeless plea to extremity the Birmingham bin onslaught situation was humiliatingly dismissed by the national today.

Amid mounting fury astatine the Labour-run assembly implicit the chaos, with rubbish piling up and rats moving riot connected the city's streets, No10 urged Unite to 'get circular the table' and negociate 'in bully faith'.

A spokesperson for the PM - said to person hand-picked section authorization person John Cotton - said the national indispensable 'drop their opposition' to wage changes astatine the bosom of a dispute.

But Unite wide caput Sharon Graham changeable backmost that Sir Keir was 'blaming' workers and had to 'wake up and odor the coffee'. She suggested helium should measurement successful to instrumentality portion successful talks.  

The backlash came aft Downing Street said constabulary person installed barriers astatine the picket enactment to forestall discarded lorries being 'recklessly blocked'.

Union members successful Birmingham launched a walkout past period successful a quality implicit wage and jobs, which is causing misery for residents who accidental they look a nationalist wellness crisis.

The assembly declared a large incidental earlier this week successful a bid to summation collections of bin sacks amid a immense pile-up of discarded connected the streets.

Local authorities curate Jim McMahon met assembly chiefs yesterday successful an effort to extremity the onslaught that has seen garbage workers signifier a implicit walkout for astir a month.

The No10 spokesperson said: 'Following that meeting, constabulary person installed barriers astatine the picket enactment to forestall discarded lorries being recklessly blocked from leaving the depots this greeting to commencement dealing with the backlog.

'Unite request to absorption connected negotiating successful bully faith, driblet their absorption to changes needed to resoluteness long-standing adjacent wage issues, and get circular the array with the assembly to bring this onslaught to an end.'

He added that lorries were present making their mode retired of the depot.

Ms Graham said: 'It is not astonishing that galore workers successful Britian question the Labour government's committedness to moving people, erstwhile it issues a connection intelligibly blaming bin workers successful a quality not of their making.

'The bottommost enactment astir this quality is that these workers, woke up 1 greeting to beryllium told they would beryllium taking up to an £8,000 wage cut. They are being made to wage the terms for austerity and atrocious decisions by Birmingham City Council.'

Ms Graham said Unite had already agreed 'major changes'. 

'Unite's squad of determination makers has been successful negotiations successful bully religion for weeks. It is the person of the assembly who is missing successful enactment and who has not been successful immoderate of the talks,' she said. 

'The authorities is going to person to aftermath up and odor the java that they are portion of this dispute, arsenic the commissioners study straight to them and they ain the £3.9billion indebtedness of the council.

'If the authorities were truly acrophobic astir the residents of Birmingham they would get the determination makers successful a country of which they are intelligibly one, to guarantee that Unite's solutions connected the array were adopted.'

The Tories person criticised ministers implicit the dispute, pointing to donations from Unite to Labour candidates astatine past year's wide predetermination and claiming the Government had since shown a 'reluctance' to telephone the national out.