Birmingham councillors have welcomed an end to the bin strike that has brought the city to a halt for seven weeks.
Conciliation service Acas said cabinet members have agreed the grade 3 posts will be maintained. The City Council confirmed certain posts will not be made redundant and Acas said bin collections will resume. Unite representatives said they would persuade staff to accept rota changes.
Councillor Deidre Alden, Conservative Spokesman for Cleaner Streets, Recycling and the Environment, said: "I am delighted for the people of Birmingham that the strike has now ended.
However, it could and should have been settled weeks ago without the need for all the damaging publicity for our city, and huge misery and disruption for residents."
The Acas statement does not represent the City Council's position
A Birmingham City Council spokesman said: "The Acas statement in connection with the waste and refuse dispute does not represent the City Council's position until these matters are considered at the next Special Cabinet Meeting on 24th August 2017. The decision on the waste re-organisation taken by the Cabinet on 27th June is the current position of the Council."
A statement from Unite said the City Council and the trade union had made substantial progress in their discussions to enable the industrial action to be paused.
The statement said both sides would continue to negotiate how the waste service could be improved and what savings could be made.
Unite said the City Council had considered the refuse workers' argument and protected the jobs of grade three workers, who are responsible for the safety of refuse vehicles.
The industrial action, which consisted of two to three hour stoppages during a daily shift, had been due to last until 21st September, with talk of it lasting until Christmas.
A summer marked by piles of rubbish and smelly streets
Councillor Roger Harmer, deputy leader of Birmingham City Council's Liberal Democrat group, said: "The suspension of the strike will be welcomed by Birmingham's long suffering residents, who have had to put up with a summer marked by piles of rubbish and smelly streets.
"However, it is clear that we have seen a complete climb down by the Council.
For weeks they told us that the supervisor loader role was unjustified, costly and not used by similar councils. Now they have agreed to keep the role. So all the misery of the strike was pointless. We are left with a financial disaster with the extra costs of the strike added to the loss of the savings that the changes would have brought.
"The Labour leadership of the Council fought a battle they could not win and the long suffering residents of Birmingham are left to pick up the pieces. They will have a chance to kick out this failed Labour leadership in next May's elections and I hope they take it."
Common sense has finally prevailed
Councillor Ian Cruise, an Independent councillor for Longbridge, said: "I am pleased common sense has finally prevailed and thanks to mediation from Acas, the bin strike has been suspended.
"I am dismayed as to why it took so long to resolve the dispute when clearly there was a compromise to be reached. Unite the union offered Acas as a route to a resolution three weeks into the dispute, only to be ignored by senior politicians on Birmingham City Council who spent almost the entirety of the dispute with their heads buried in the sand, hoping the situation would just disappear.
"I will now be pressing both the Leader of the Council and the Cabinet Member, Councillor Trickett, to ensure lessons are learned from this fiasco and the city is cleaned up as soon as possible."
The council is currently consulting over a new waste strategy to transform services when a Tyseley Incinerator contract ends in 2019.
It is unclear what impact the changes will have on other public services in the city, which could result in libraries or parks having to close down to pay for the budget, which was overspent by £1 million a month.
