In order to clear the rubbish off the streets we must pay the teaching assistants more
We do think this is a sign of something having gone wrong. But then there are few who do think society is wholly and justly on exactly the right path at present.
“I’m afraid to open my front door, they’re everywhere,” said Mary Dore, eyeing the ground outside her house in Balsall Heath suspiciously. “They run out from under the cars when you get in, they’re going in the engines. They chewed through the cables in my son’s car, costing him god knows how much.
“There’s one street I can’t walk my dog because they come running out of the grass and the piles of rubbish. One time I screamed.”
She’s referring to rats, which have multiplied rapidly as the rubbish has piled up in an ongoing bin strike in Birmingham.
On Tuesday, it was four weeks since bin workers walked out indefinitely, after striking intermittently since January, and a day since the council declared a major incident with more than 17,000 tonnes of uncollected rubbish on the streets.
Pretty much the first and most basic task of local government is making sure the bins are emptied. Doesn’t have to perform the action, but does have to ensure the action is performed. So, yes, something does need to be done here. And, obviously enough, if there’s a strike going on then waving money at the strikers seems like a possible solution. Except, in Birmingham:
Birmingham City Council has paid out almost £1.1bn in equal pay claims since a landmark case was brought against the authority in 2012.
The authority said in 2023 the bill had spiralled to £760m.
However earlier this year, Max Caller, the lead commissioner appointed by the government to oversee the financial recovery of the council, said the bill to settle could be below that.
Sally Maybury, a former admin assistant at the council, was one of 174 people who won the ruling at the Supreme Court more than a decade ago.
The court found hundreds of mostly female employees working in roles such as teaching assistants, cleaners and catering staff missed out on bonuses which were given to staff in traditionally male-dominated roles such as refuse collectors and street cleaners.
As we understand this - and clearly, we’re open to correction - it is only possible to wave money at the bin collectors if the same amount is also waved at the teaching assistants. Who are not on strike.
There is something wrong in a society making such an insistence.
We know what it is too. The insistence that there is a value to something other than what the market determines. Fools have decided to encode into law a nonsense, that there is some definable “value” to a type of work other than market wages. The only economic value anything has is what someone will pay for it. For wages this then becomes the amount folk are willing to pay to get the job done as compared to the amount people will have to be paid to do the job. As and when all the desired labour - yes, of suitable quality - has been hired at whatever price gains willing workers then that’s the value of that labour. There is no other valuation possible.
Well, no other useful or logical valuation possible that is. For clearly it’s possible to be an idiot about it. Which is where we are. In order to clear Birmingham’s streets of 17,000 tonnes of rubbish and the associated rats the size of cats it is necessary to pay teaching assistants more.
Which, given that the teaching assistants aren’t going to be picking up shovels to either move the rubbish or beat the rats is an absurdity. Therefore the policy that led to this is in itself absurd.
Work’s worth what needs to be paid to get people to do it. Any other “valuation” is an idiocy we need to remove from what will then be a more functional society.
Tim Worstall