Back to the streets for strikers

Well, it's all over.

As of this week, bin collections in the Leeds City Council area will - hopefully - be getting back to normal. Great news for all residents, who can expect an end to the piles of rubbish on the city's streets.

And great news for the refuse collectors who will have a few weeks of regular pay before Christmas. They may not all be happy about the terms of their return to work, but with more than two-thirds voting in favour of accepting the council's offer, residents can keep their fingers crossed things will not deteriorate again.

Information on what the agreement means in terms of bin collections is available via the council's website. Apart from some slightly conflicting information released over the past 11 weeks, I have to say the bin strike has had little impact on me. My street has not had the dozens of bin bags spilling their contents onto the floor that have been seen elsewhere. We've had no rats (unless you count the one dead one the cats left in the middle of the floor a couple of weeks ago, but given that they also deposited what looked like the remains of a pigeon in the same spot, I'm not putting that down to bin strikes). I tended to side with the strikers anyway, which perhaps increased my willingness to make a few adaptations during the strike action.

But what struck me the most was what I found out about the attitudes of some residents to waste and recycling. After my green recycling bin filled up, I made several trips to the local tip in Harehills. I spotted quite a few other people doing the same, dropping off cardboard and tins and old newspapers in the clearly-labelled "green bin waste" skips.

The incredible thing was the number of people who simply empties whatever was in the back of their cars into the nearest skip, not even looking at the signs showing what kind of waste went where. During the busiest periods, such as Sunday afternoons, there were council employees on hand to clear full skips and direct people to the correct skip. Despite this, I saw someone pulling up, dragging a three-piece suite out of their van and chucking it into the "green bin waste" skip while a frustrated yellow-jacketed man watched in amazement. He called to them to throw the furniture into a different pile, but by then there were only a couple of cushions left. Cue two yellow jackets half-climbing into a skip to retrieve the sofas as, supervision being momentarily absent, six other people took the opportunity to throw in a broken stepladder, old dog bed, half a tree and what looked like the contents of a fridge.

Perhaps it's just me, but I find behaviour like this incredibly arrogant. It's like people who knock something off a rail in a shop, turn round to look at the crumpled heap on the floor, then walk off, leaving it for a lowly shop assistant to pick up. Having worked in several customer service roles, I might be more sensitive to this kind of thing than others. There are things, for example, which I know people leave in cinemas which would make your stomach turn if I listed them here.

But whatever my reasons, I can't be the only one who thinks dumping your unwanted goods in any old way is rude. The council provides a thorough facility for everyone to get rid of rubbish quickly and easily, and employs people to help anyone who can't read the massive signs at the tip. The least people can do is make the three extra steps to put everything in the right place.

Or perhaps they're just so busy and important, they don't need to bother.

Action in the face of inaction

It seems there's something in the water supplying the headquarters of various unions at the moment.

Following several weeks of bin strikes in Leeds and some industrial action at Royal Mail centres elsewhere, things look set to escalate.

Postal workers look likely to extend their strike nationally at the end of the week, while firefighters in South Yorkshire take to the picket lines in a 24-hour strike from tomorrow. Meanwhile, the refuse workers are still out and, despite finally returning to the table, Leeds City Council looks likely to have its improved offer rejected.

But who is to blame for this sudden outpouring of workplace dissatisfaction? Is it simply down to worker greed - the unions firing up individuals to collectively pronounce they deserve more than they are currently getting?

Or is it the companies' fault for stretching, pushing and squeezing their workers beyond all reasonable measure in order to show shareholders the biggest possible profit?

Taking the postal strike as an example, I broke a story last year about postal workers being forced to cover four miles an hour while carrying and delivering their rounds. It was later picked up by national media, showing this was not a policy implemented on a local level. That story first emerged 18 months ago, since when there have been further cuts and closures putting further pressure on the postmen.

And it's not just the problems of the job they have to deal with. As the frontline workers, they bear the brunt of customers' frustrations when, in reality, there is precious little they can do about it. Victoria Cohen put it brilliantly in a piece for the Guardian today.

The postmen's plight is nothing new. Across the country, workers are bearing the brunt of bad management by those whose goal is profit above all else. The newspaper industry is a prime example of this, particularly for local and regional titles. Their owners have pursued impressive figures at the expense of all else - including the quality of their product. Losing sight of what their businesses are all about, they have made editorial staff redundant, put up prices, refused to replace departing staff and piled on a mountain of additional tasks for the already struggling staff to deal with.

The result of this? Morale is at an all-time low. Workers have lost faith in their employers. Sales are plummeting, causing advertising revenue to fall even further than it would have naturally in a recession.

And frontline staff are left trying to explain to readers why there is nobody available to go to the parish council meeting, to review the local amateur dramatics society's latest production, to attend the opening of a new school - or to hold business and council leaders to account for failing to resolve workers' dissatisfaction and avert the threat of strikes.