Angela Rayner has made clear she will not be “pushed around” by the Unite trade union after it voted to suspend her membership and rethink its ties with the party.
The deputy prime minister was targeted for censure by the union over her role in the Birmingham bin strike, although party sources said Rayner resigned her membership of Unite some months ago.
The motion passed at Unite’s 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 £8,000 on some Birmingham workers.
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.
Unite’s move against Rayner appeared to be largely symbolic and took place as she and her cabinet colleagues were at Keir Starmer’s official country residence, Chequers, for an away day to look at the political year ahead.
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.
Rayner, who is still a member of the Unison trade union, is considered an ally of the unions within Labour and pushed through the party’s package of workers’ rights in the face of opposition from big business.
A party source said: “Angela’s not interested in silly stunts, she’s interested in changing workers’ lives. Unite rejected a deal in Birmingham and their demands would have undermined equal pay, discriminating against female workers. Angela won’t be pushed around, and she quit Unite some months ago.
“Angela’s 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.”
Striking bin workers stand in front of billboards commissioned by the Unite trade union earlier this week in Birmingham. Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images
The Unite motion said that Rayner and a number of Labour councillors had been suspended for “bringing the union into disrepute” and there would be an investigation into their behaviour with a “view to expelling them from the union”, although this would appear not to be possible in Rayner’s case.
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.
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.
“Unite is crystal clear it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette,” she said. “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.”
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 ready to end hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding for the party. Unite gave about £2m 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’s biggest union backer, having given more than £70m raised from its members since the electoral commission’s records began in 2007.
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 “absolute limit of what we can offer”. 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.
Unite’s dispute is with Birmingham city council, but since 2023 the local authority’s finances and governance have been overseen by government-appointed commissioners who are answerable to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
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Cotton said Unite had repeatedly rejected reasonable offers and its demands would have undermined female workers at the council by reopening equal pay liabilities.
Uncollected refuse bags in the Aston area of Birmingham in June. There are still issues with uncollected rubbish in the city. Photograph: Jacob King/PA
A Labour party spokesperson said: “The Labour government has introduced the biggest upgrade in workers’ 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.”
A No 10 spokesperson said of the strike that the government’s priority had always been Birmingham residents.
There are still issues with uncollected rubbish in Birmingham, although the situation has improved since late March when the council declared a major incident over the mountains of bin bags on the streets.
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.
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.
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 of this as the strike drags on.