Unite votes to suspend Angela Rayner membership over Birmingham bin strikes

Unite has voted to suspend the membership of the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and reconsider its ties with Labour over their approach to the Birmingham bin workers’ strike.

Labour’s biggest union donor passed the motion at its policy conference on Friday, despite party sources saying Rayner had resigned her membership of Unite months ago.

The motion is a sign of how bad relations have got over the dispute about pay and conditions, which Unite says would impose pay cuts of £8,000 on some workers.

Bin workers in Birmingham have been striking since January and walked out indefinitely in March.

The Unite motion, which was passed overwhelmingly, said the union was prepared to discuss its relationship with Labour if Birmingham council forced through the redundancies of striking workers.

It suggests Unite could be prepared to end hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding for Labour if it severed or suspended its long relationship with the party.

The Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, said: “Unite is crystal clear it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette. Angela Rayner has had every opportunity to intervene and resolve this dispute but has instead backed a rogue council that has peddled lies and smeared its workers fighting huge pay cuts.

“The disgraceful actions of the government and a so-called Labour council, is essentially fire-and-rehire and makes a joke of the Employment Relations Act promises.

“People up and down the country are asking whose side is the Labour government on and coming up with the answer: not workers.”

A No 10 spokesperson said of the strike that the government’s priority has always been Birmingham residents.