But come forward 57 years and the old struggles continue. How do you give such an essential worker a decent, liveable wage? How do you break the dismissive opinion that \u2018anyone could be a bin man or a road sweeper\u2019? That you don\u2019t need complex training, or education. So therefore don\u2019t be too generous to those who are there to keep you safe and clear of the rubbish produced by consumerism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The reality is that many jobs that ensure our wellbeing are apparently unskilled and lacking in variety. The Birmingham bin strike throws up the reality behind this supposedly rather unimportant job: cleaning up. But Birmingham is suffering because what could have been ended over a year ago has dragged on, costing vast sums of money and unhealthy streets. Rats and mice have multiplied, creating a feeling that civilisation is on the rocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n
Society often rewards jobs that don\u2019t have such an important social profile. The bin strike is a case in point. When I was a road sweeper I might have been living in a vastly changing society without
realising it. Change it did, through the 1970s and 1980s, creating almost a division between the earlier decades that I lived through as a child and young man and the later generations I was maturing into. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Yet little has changed in attitudes towards jobs that are looked down on as unimportant \u2013 until the worker stops doing the job. Then you have that sense that civilisation is at an end.\u00a0<\/p>\n Are we ever going to suitably reward those that are considered the great unskilled? Are we ever going to seriously see them as essential workers that keep society going? They wake up before us and apply themselves to doing hundreds of essential jobs \u2013 repairing, cleaning, ordering, delivering, driving \u2013 so that we can get on with our lives uninterrupted.\u00a0<\/p>\n Truly the world is upside down and we underappreciate at our peril the labours of the great overlooked.\u00a0<\/p>\n Surely the government could do us all a favour and end the bin strike in Birmingham and end this ordeal over wages and conditions for such important workers. Let us not continue the pretence that labour should be got cheap because it doesn\u2019t involve masses of exams to attain work. If it is needed by us all then it requires the qualifications of being there to ensure our ability to carry on with our lives unimpeded.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let\u2019s hope the government can put its shoulder to the wheel and help us bring social justice to this painful situation in the UK\u2019s second city.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words\u00a0<\/strong>from our archive<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Change a vendor\u2019s life.<\/strong><\/p>\n Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week \u2013 and always take the magazine. It\u2019s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.<\/strong><\/p>\n You can also support online: Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.<\/strong><\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was no romance in my ending up sweeping streets. I was not doing a George Orwell and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,7056,4884,897,46340,391,7101,16,34004,15],"class_list":["post-849185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-birmingham","tag-birmingham","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-from-the-magazine","tag-great-britain","tag-jobs","tag-john-bird","tag-opinion","tag-strikes","tag-uk","tag-unions","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116289551023626718","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/35-birthday-subs_v2_800x250.png\")
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