\n<\/p>\n
Angela Rayner has said she will not be \u201cpushed around\u201d by the Unite trade union after it voted to suspend her membership and rethink its ties with the party.<\/p>\n
The deputy prime minister was censured by the union over her role in the Birmingham bin strike, although party sources said Rayner resigned her membership of Unite some months ago.<\/p>\n
The motion passed at Unite\u2019s policy conference is a sign of how bad relations have become between Labour and its historically largest trade union donor over the dispute about pay and conditions, which the union says would impose pay cuts of \u00a38,000 on some Birmingham workers.<\/p>\n
It is also an escalation of wider tensions between the party and Unite, one of the most leftwing affiliated unions, which has been campaigning against the cuts to the winter fuel allowance cuts and disability benefits.<\/p>\n
Unite\u2019s move against Rayner appeared to be largely symbolic and took place as she and her cabinet colleagues were at the prime minister\u2019s official country residence, Chequers, for an away day to look at the political year ahead.<\/p>\n
However, the threat to cut or further reduce financial ties with Labour could be deeply damaging for the party at a time when it needs to maintain healthy funds to fight off the threats of Reform and the Conservatives.<\/p>\n
Rayner, who remains a member of Unison, is considered an ally of the unions within Labour and pushed through the party\u2019s package of workers\u2019 rights in the face of opposition from big business.<\/p>\n
A party source said: \u201cAngela\u2019s not interested in silly stunts, she\u2019s interested in changing workers\u2019 lives. Unite rejected a deal in Birmingham and their demands would have undermined equal pay, discriminating against female workers. Angela won\u2019t be pushed around, and she quit Unite some months ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cAngela\u2019s been fighting for equal pay for decades as a trade unionist, and as a home-care worker has experienced what it was like to be paid less as a working-class woman for the same work.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Striking bin workers stand in front of billboards commissioned by Unite this week in Birmingham.<\/span> Photograph: Guy Smallman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The Unite motion said Rayner and several Labour councillors had been suspended for \u201cbringing the union into disrepute\u201d and there would be an investigation into their behaviour with a \u201cview to expelling them from the union\u201d, although this would appear not to be possible in Rayner\u2019s case.<\/p>\n She is understood to have made her last membership payment in April, although she was still recorded as being a member of Unite on the last list of ministerial interests published on 29 May.<\/p>\n The Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, accused the Labour-led Birmingham council of carrying out action similar to fire-and-rehire as striking workers were being replaced by agency workers and faced the possibility of redundancy.<\/p>\n \u201cUnite is crystal clear it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette,\u201d she said. \u201cAngela 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n It suggests Unite could be ready to end hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding for the party. Unite gave about \u00a32m to Labour in the year before the election. It has scaled back its financial support in recent years, with Unison now contributing more, but it is historically the party\u2019s biggest union backer, having given more than \u00a370m raised from its members since the Electoral Commission\u2019s records began in 2007.<\/p>\n Friends of Rayner in the union movement rallied round her following the spat, with many dismissing it as a performance to underline Unite\u2019s hardline position in the bin workers\u2019 strike.<\/p>\n One MP close to the unions said: \u201cColleagues across the movement are saying Unite have completely lost the plot. Angela has done more for workers than any politician in decades and picking a fight with her shows they\u2019re not serious.<\/p>\n \u201cFrankly, this behaviour won\u2019t deliver for Unite members. It\u2019s seems about [Graham] trying to take the limelight, posturing and her looking to next year\u2019s general secretary election.\u201d<\/p>\n However, a senior Unite source said the motion was not a stunt and represented real anger at the conference among delegates about Labour\u2019s position on the bin strike. They said Graham was representing her members and suggested a falling-out with Labour was a growing prospect.<\/p>\n The union also voted to suspend the membership of John Cotton, the Labour leader of Birmingham council, who on Wednesday said the local authority was at the \u201cabsolute limit of what we can offer\u201d. The council has not said what its next steps would be but it said this week that it needed to proceed with changes to its services without delay, as the latest round of talks ended without resolution.<\/p>\n Unite\u2019s dispute is with Birmingham city council, but since 2023 the local authority\u2019s finances and governance have been overseen by government-appointed commissioners who are answerable to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.<\/p>\n Quick Guide<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Show<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.<\/p>\n If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods.<\/p>\n Secure Messaging in the Guardian app<\/strong><\/p>\n The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.<\/p>\n If you don’t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS\/Android) and go to the menu. Select ‘Secure Messaging’. <\/p>\n SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post<\/strong><\/p>\n See our guide at theguardian.com\/tips\u00a0for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each.\u00a0<\/p>\n Illustration: Guardian Design \/ Rich Cousins<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n Cotton said Unite had repeatedly rejected reasonable offers and its demands would have undermined female workers at the council by reopening equal pay liabilities.<\/p>\n A Labour party spokesperson said: \u201cThe Labour government has introduced the biggest upgrade in workers\u2019 rights in a generation to address low pay, insecure work, and poor working conditions, which will benefit 15 million workers across the country. Only Labour is delivering the change working people voted for and so deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n A No 10 spokesperson said of the strike that the government\u2019s priority had always been Birmingham residents.<\/p>\n <\/span>Uncollected refuse bags in the Aston area of Birmingham in June. There are still issues with uncollected rubbish in the city.<\/span> Photograph: Jacob King\/PA<\/p>\n There is still uncollected rubbish in Birmingham, although the situation has improved since late March when the council <\/em>declared a major incident over the mountains of bin bags on the streets.<\/p>\n In May, the council secured a court order preventing striking bin workers on the picket line from delaying bin lorries leaving depots, which was one of their tactics to ensure the strike had the most impact.<\/p>\n Many regular bin collections have since resumed, with the lorries being staffed by agency workers. But parts of the city, particularly more deprived areas, still have piles of waste in the street, with the smell exacerbated by the hot weather.<\/p>\n Recycling bin collections in the city of more than 1 million people have been suspended since early February and residents have been told to take their recycling waste to the tip or store it at home. In reality, many people have put it in their general waste bin, with growing concern about the environmental impact as the strike drags on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Angela Rayner has said she will not be \u201cpushed around\u201d by the Unite trade union after it voted to suspend her membership and rethink its ties with the party. The deputy prime minister was censured by the union over her role in the Birmingham bin strike, although party sources said Rayner resigned her membership of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[134,3058,3621,3623,2719,3622,840],"class_list":{"0":"post-10592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-labour","9":"tag-pushed","10":"tag-rayner","11":"tag-suspend","12":"tag-union","13":"tag-unite","14":"tag-votes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Contact us about this story<\/h4>\n