Angela Rayner has been accused of handling the Birmingham bin workers’ strike in a “totally and utterly abhorrent” way by the Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham.
Graham told BBC Radio 4 Today’s programme: “Angela Rayner refuses to get involved, and she is directly aiding and abetting the fire-and-rehire of these bin workers, it is totally and utterly abhorrent.”
In a heated interview, Graham said the deputy prime minister had also failed to turn up to a recent meeting with Graham at an event, saying: “She doesn’t want to talk about this issue, because she knows that what is happening is abhorrent, but she does not want to intervene.”
A party source told the Guardian that Rayner had to attend an urgent statement in the house led by the prime minister instead of going to the event and described Graham’s claims as “baseless”.
Graham added that Rayner had been a member of the union for 10 years but may have left of her own accord over the last quarter because “she’s seen the mood music”. Graham said: “Angela Rayner has been a member of our union for 10 years and she was very clearly a member when she asked us to give her £10,000 for the election.”
She added that in previous weeks, “we’ve discussed that we’re not happy with what’s going on”.
Members of Unite voted to re-examine the union’s relationship with Labour and suspend Rayner’s membership of Unite over her role in the bin strike at a recent conference.
However, party sources have suggested Rayner resigned her membership some months ago.
Graham said: “If I was Angela Rayner this morning, I wouldn’t be trying to do a Houdini act on whether, technically, she was or she wasn’t [a member] at this juncture. She’s been a member of our union for years and years and years – and I understand in the [UK parliament’s] ‘book of interests’ she was, in May, also a member of our union.”
She said instead of trying to argue over membership status, Rayner should be asking: “How have we got ourselves into a position where 800 delegates at the Unite policy conference … have put their hands up on two things: one, to say that they want Angela Rayner suspended from our union, and two that they want to look again at our relationship with Labour. Something is going wrong.”
Unite members needed to see that the £1.4m affiliation fee the union donated to Labour was “worth something”, she said, adding: “It is hard to justify it …. Would that money be better spent on frontline services for my members? But the decision will be a serious decision. It’s not a rash decision. It goes to the rules conference.”
While Unite’s move against Rayner has been viewed as largely symbolic, the threat to cut financial ties with Labour could be deeply damaging for the party.
A party source said: “Birmingham city council are independent employers and the government is, rightly, not a party in this dispute.”
He added: “The deputy prime minister is taking some of the toughest action in the world to ban the use of unscrupulous fire and rehire through the employment rights bill.”
Responding previously to the Guardian about the decision by Unite, 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.”
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 Birmingham city council spokesperson said: “The government have been very clear on fire and rehire, introducing some of the toughest restrictions in the world, and the council leader supports their stance.
“Unite rejected the council’s fair and reasonable offer and voluntary redundancy remains on the table, as do opportunities for training and redeployment across the council. We will be communicating with our staff and trade unions as to next steps.
“We absolutely have to have fair and equitable pay across the council, so that the council isn’t plunged into another equal pay crisis.”