I don’t know that I’d spend money on lawyers over this issue.
My understanding is that there is no provision in the Act which would allow manual labour to be demanded from owners or residents, and a By-Law requiring free manual labour could be easily challenged, perhaps as “slavery”.
However, there is nothing to stop the OC offering “fair compensation” as an incentive to volunteers.
Your problem may be that $10 per week is not “fair compensation”.
When our local council changed over from individual bins to shared bins, strata blocks were allocated only 50% of the disposal volume per lot per week that free-standing houses were given for the same annual charge, but the offset was that the garbos would come onto the property, drag the bins out to the street and back in again after emptying.
No insurance issues whatever.
That offset does allow me to calculate (from my current rates notice) the “value” that our Council assigns to bin dragging and returning.
And the answer is $3.63 per bin per collection.
Dech, why don’t you tell us how many bins your block has, how often they are emptied and then calculate an appropriate weekly value.
That price does not include washing out and sanitising bins, but that is a service which is available from commercial operators for about $6-$8 per bin per occasion (which doesn’t have to be after every emptying).