Labour’s Employment Rights Bill could see more towns and cities across the country go to rat and ruin, as bin strikes in Birmingham enter their eighth consecutive week with rubbish stacking up on streets. Those sorry scenes – which will remind many of the dark days of the Winter of Discontent – are already spreading to Sheffield, where bin workers represented by the Unite union have been on strike since August in a dispute with the local service provider Veolia. In a thinly veiled threat to local government leaders and residents alike, striking employees have even brought a giant inflatable rat to their picket lines.

In an official press release, Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham has declared that “anyone who does business with Veolia will now be hearing from Unite no matter where they operate”. Sure enough, protests soon reached the steps of Leeds City Hall, where the City Council was targeted on account of its own contract with Veolia. This is a provider which serves 15 million people across more than 25 local authorities in the UK.

With so many livelihoods at stake, and tensions seemingly spreading as fast as rats in Birmingham are breeding, you would think this Labour Government would be pulling out all the stops to shut down the disruption. Instead, they are doing the exact opposite.

Angela Rayer, who received £10,000 in donations from Unite during the general election campaign alone, recently announced to the House of Commons that her Employment Rights Bill was “resetting industrial relations”. If, like me, you had hoped that this ‘reset’ would help prevent a repeat of Birmingham-style bin strikes, you would be wrong.

We already know that the legislation, which some are now calling the ‘Unemployment Rights Bill’, will cost businesses £5bn a year by the Government’s own reckoning and destroy jobs. What has mostly gone under the radar so far is that the Bill makes widespread bin strikes, and industrial action as a whole, much more likely.

Firstly, the Bill makes it easier for trade unions to secure recognition. Rather than having to demonstrate that the 10% of represented workers are members of a specific union, just 2% will do. And the current requirement for 40% of all workers to support recognition of a specific union is being scrapped altogether.

Secondly, the Bill makes it easier for trade unions to go on strike, removing the requirement for at least 50% turnout in strike ballots, and for at least 40% of all members to approve of the strike action. Instead, there will be no turnout requirement, and strike action will be able to be approved with a simple majority.

Finally, the Bill removes the current requirement for a designated ‘picket organiser’ to maintain order and safety during strikes. Without this provision in Birmingham, it is possible that militant strikers would have blocked emergency efforts to clear rubbish with help from neighbouring councils, and caused an even graver public health emergency in the process.

So, to sum up: more trade unions in more workplaces, able to strike more easily and more irresponsibly. Nothing less than a recipe for rat-infested disaster. You would think that the risks were so obvious that Keir Starmer could see them even without his donor-funded spectacles. To save our country’s bin collections, he must get rid of Rayner’s Bill.