Striking refuse workers protest outside Sheffield Town Hall
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00:00I'm here because me and my wife are disabled and we have a dispensary service to empty the bin.
00:08Now, times after times Viola has missed the bin.
00:16Five, six times. Now this time, they've missed it again.
00:21I've been to the council place, on Monday I had somebody to take me
00:27and I spoke to the, well the supervisor rang me up, we'll get it sorted out.
00:35The office lady said that she was in charge of the office staff, she'll try and sort it out.
00:43It is now Wednesday dinner time and we still haven't had the bin emptied and I'm disgusted and it's a disgrace.
00:52And so, obviously if Viola were to recognise Unite and get these guys back in to help and do that,
01:00they would have emptied your bins hopefully by now.
01:02Oh yeah, well, when they're not on strike the bin gets emptied.
01:07Sometimes they miss, I'm not saying all the time, sometimes they miss.
01:11I'm going to be fair, but no.
01:14And you see the problem I've got is this, they keep changing the bin room because they don't want the job.
01:21And then when they change the bin room, they don't know the rounds and they don't know where to go.
01:27Basically, we're trying to fight for recognition from Unite.
01:33We've been with the GMB for a number of years and just a group of us felt that the GMB weren't doing what we wanted them to do in the company.
01:42So we broke away and basically the GMB and Viola won't recognise Unite within the company.
01:50And what kind of problems does that cause for you guys then when you've not got that recognition?
01:56We've got roughly 48% of the workforce, so obviously you're talking half the workforce that aren't being represented and aren't getting a voice within Viola.
02:06We've approached the GMB, we didn't want joint recognition originally, it was just a seat round the table in the meetings.
02:15But they wouldn't allow it and we've ended up being pushed to a point where we've had to go for joint recognition.