Disabled Workers At Remploy To Be Laid Off
Madness. Just madness. Do they want us to work or not?
Ministers want to halt the big losses experienced at Remploy’s 50 factories across the country.
Instead that they want those able to work to be employed through schemes run by private sector companies with a record of already at successfully providing work.
But the move is likely to be fiercely attacked by disability groups, unions and some MPs.
The staff at Remploy factories are highly unionised and ministers can expect a battle as they push ahead with their plans
Despite receiving £555 million of government funding, latest figures show that Remploy have failed to successfully compete as a commercial business.
Ministers say that it costs the taxpayer £25,000 to keep one Remploy factory worker in their job each year, and yet the factory bosses are paying 50 per cent of their employees to do nothing, because of the lack of orders.
The Department of Work and Pensions say that the offer of voluntary redundancies is a decision that has been made by the management at Remploy to ensure they do not overspend their budgets.
More than 50 Remploy factories employ 3,000 people, but they operate at a huge loss. They had expected to continue receiving a grant of £111 million each year, for the next five years, from the Department of Work and Pensions.
Today’s announcement, means workers will be encouraged to take the redundancy and offered help to get another job through Remploy’s own employment services system.
A Government source said: “Despite £555m in Government funding Remploy’s factories have not been able to compete as commercial businesses. For the vast majority of disabled people, mainstream employment is a preferable option, and workers who take voluntary redundancy will be helped into a job through Remploy’s successful Employment Services.
“They have supported 24,000 people into mainstream jobs with companies like Asda and Royal Mail and have added 38,000 vacancies to their books this financial year alone.”
Some factories will now be under pressure to close completely.
When Peter Hain, one of Iain Duncan Smith’s predecessors as Work and Pensions Secretary, attempted a programme of Remploy factory closures three years ago, he faced personal abuse and threats. He eventually closed 29 factories but there were no compulsory redundancies.
While some disabled charities have indicated that they do favour more disabled people trying to get work through private sector companies there is certain to be a backlash. Ministers will fear a highly emotive campaign from the unions that will paint the Tory-led Coalition as heartless.
Mr Duncan Smith’s department will tell MPs that the Remploy modernisation plan put in place by the Labour government needed a 130 per cent increase in public procurement sales at a time when the economy had gone into recession. The factories have been unable to get anywhere near that increase.
Remploy was founded in 1945 as part of the post-war development of the welfare state. It remains the largest nationalised corporation in Britain’s manufacturing sector.
Same Difference 
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