The man who fitted my dishwasher the other week used to work on the bins in Glasgow and told me how one day – in a story revealing him to be the hardest man the city has ever seen – he punched a rat in the face. Apparently, the animal lunged at him while he was emptying a bin and it seemed like his only option was an uppercut to its whiskery snout. It’s the perfect Glasgow anecdote really: violent, but funny.

And revealing as well. The dishwasher guy said rats were a constant issue for the bin guys in Glasgow and in some ways it’s not surprising or even troubling necessarily: big cities equals lots of rats. I particularly remember them scurrying – no: strolling – past me in the Dundasvale area of the city where I used to park my car. However, a healthy population of rats is also a sign they have lots of debris and rubbish to feed on and look around you: they have lots of debris and rubbish to feed on.

It could also be about to get a lot worse. Barring a last-minute solution this week, there’s a chance that waste and recycling workers in Glasgow and other council areas in Scotland will be going on strike in August (warning to picture editors: look out all those images of piles of rubbish during the Winter of Discontent in the 1970s). Not only are the staff talking about the conditions they have to work in, using a giant inflatable rat called Cludgie to underline their point, they’re calling for a bigger pay rise than the councils are offering. Unison says the workers deserve a wage that reflects their essential roles.

Too right they do. I once spent a day at the giant recycling centre in Blochairn just off the M8 and, as you’d expect, for the staff there it’s a tough, dirty and relentless job. I spoke to some of the guys who man the giant conveyor belt that brings forth the rubbish, ton after ton, day after day. Some said it was better than being out on the bin lorries, but others told me the problem was that there just wasn’t enough staff to do all the jobs that need done.

So it’s about more than just pay but let’s deal with the pay thing first. The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has just hinted at 5.5% above-inflation pay deals for teachers and NHS workers and while the conservative part of me worries this might be the first sign Labour won’t stick to their promise to be fiscally cautious, another side of me thinks: if a 5.5% above-inflation pay deal is good enough for the teachers and NHS workers, then it’s good enough for the waste and recycling workers too (which is one of the reasons it’s economically risky).

The response of the councils in Scotland has been that they can’t afford anything like a 5.5% pay rise and that the 3.2% they’ve already offered is the limit of their affordability and it’s probably true. The Scottish Government has cut council budgets, ringfenced the money it does give to councils for its own central government priorities, and also insisted on the farce of the council tax freeze. Not only does it make it hard for councils, it makes it a bit rich for the Scottish Government to say, as they have been, that the pay negotiations are between councils and unions – nuffin to do with us guv.

For Glasgow, it was also particularly revealing, and infuriating, that SNP councillors reportedly vetoed an attempt by the local authority body Cosla to ask John Swinney for more money for public sector staff and avoid the bin strikes. Keir Greenaway of GMB Scotland put it best when he said that some council leaders were apparently keener to protect their relationship with colleagues at Holyrood than take action to resolve the dispute. Well said Mr Greenaway.

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Of course, the Scottish Government could address this immediately by providing additional funding (and the sooner they ditch the council tax freeze nonsense the better). Giving councils greater autonomy would also help by enabling local authorities to spend on their priorities. In Glasgow’s case, that would clearly be rubbish and the state of the streets, although do the council leaders get it? Have they eyes? And given what SNP councillors have just done in vetoing the approach to John Swinney, my confidence that Glasgow’s SNP council would prioritise the waste crisis even if they could is not high.

The crisis is also much more complicated than taking on more staff (although they should) and paying the staff they have more (although they should do that as well). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we will not fix Glasgow and what the GMB calls the crisis level of rubbish in the city until we fix the issue that’s staring us in the face. Walk down a street and you’ll see it. Not enough bins. Visit a park and you’ll see it. Not enough bins. In fact, spend more than a few minutes in the city and you’ll see it. Not. Enough. Bins.

The lack of original thinking doesn’t help either. The Litter Lottery Glasgow’s introduced, in which people who photograph themselves binning rubbish get the chance to win some money, is a good idea, but we need more of that kind of initiative which works to human instincts. So stop charging people for their brown bins. And stop charging people for bulk uplifts. It you make it expensive to get rid of rubbish in the right way, you will create an incentive to get rid of it the wrong way. Hence the mattress on the street corner. Hence the empty wrappers whirling round your feet.

Workers at the conveyor belt at Blochairn

Hopefully, all of this will be on the minds of the council employers if and when they sort the dispute out. The unions have made it clear how the workers are feeling: they’re angry at the way they’ve been treated and they feel undervalued.

So let’s give the last word to Chris Mitchell of the GMB who has diagnosed the problem and the solution. Rubbish is piling up in Glasgow, he says, and the city needs a reset and deep clean; the place is a mess. The solution? Pretty obvious: cuts have consequences, he says, and you cannot cut your way out of a crisis.