Falkirk Council: Advice given ahead of planned refuse workers strike

Refuse collectors, street cleansing teams and recycling centre workers who are members of Unite are due to walk out for eight days, starting tomorrow (Wednesday), August 24.

Members of Unite the Union, Unison and the GMB all turned down an initial pay offer of two per cent and an increased offer of 3.5 per cent last week.

Falkirk Council has said due to “uncertainty around staff availability” means they don’t know whether bins will be emptied or not on any given day.

A spokesperson said: “For this reason, our advice is to put your bin out by 6.30am on your normal collection day but take it back in if it is not emptied by the end of the day.”

They added that services which are likely to be impacted are: resident and commercial wheeled bin collections; recycling centres at Roughmute and Kinneil; litter bins; street litter and fly tipping clearances; and resident collections.

The council say if green bins filled with landfill waste are not emptied on the correct day they should be placed out from Thursday, September 1 and they will be collected as soon as possible.

If blue, burgundy, brown bin or black box are not emptied during the strike period, they should not be put it out again until the next scheduled collection day, as they will not have the resource to catch up in between.

Food and AHP collections will occur as normal on strike days, as they are collected by a council contractor. However, collection times may differ.

The spokesperson added: “We will not be in a position to collect any additional waste when bins are collected either during, or on your first scheduled collection after the strike period ends.

“Bulky uplift collections are suspended, please refer to our website for further details.

"During the notified strike days we may not be in a position to service street litter bins or collect fly tipped material.

“Be assured that we will endeavour to clear any waste build up as soon as we can.”