Factories that give work to disabled people are facing the axe as Government pulls plug on funding Dozens of factories which provide employment for disabled people are expected to close by the end of the year after the government pulled the plug on funding. More than 1,700 jobs are at risk after the state-owned firm, Remploy, announced plans to shut 36 of its 54 sites. The decision was condemned as âdespicableâ and âbarbaricâ last night by unions. But Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said it was wrong for the state to subsidise âVictorian-era segregated employmentâ for the disabled. Remploy was started up as a source of employment for soldiers returning from WW2 who had been disabled whilst fighting for Britain. It expanded to include work provision for many others who have both mental or physical disabilities. In his plans to reform the benefit system Ian Duncan-Smith has decided that there is enough protection of employment rights for disabled job seekers and that new rules to prevent discrimination of people with a disability should ensure that there is a level playing field in the job market. I am not even joking. There was a similar policy under Margaret Thatcher's government to close specialist hospitals and care homes for the mentally ill and kicked the patients out into society and gave it the catchy title of 'Care in the Community'. What I can see happening is that former Remploy workers are going to try and claim benefits if they are not able to find jobs and their job history will show recent employment so they will be viewed as able enough to look for work and benefits cut if they fail to do so. Remploy worker's jobs are subsidised by the state, around £27k per person but how much will it cost to have the same people on benefits or put back into full time care? This is another short sighted, knee jerk reaction by the Tory dominated coalition government. Not enough people are going to be affected to force any form of U-turn and as such Cameron and his bunch of toffs in number 10 will claim it is a popular policy. Is this what the Tories meant by "Compassionate Conservatism"?
Disabled charities have said that, by channeling the funding away from remploy they can increase the number in work by up to 8 times.
Sounds like a good plan to me ... Take the money from a loss making orginisation, disperse the money across a number of orginistaion and get more disabled people into work ! More effective!
If that is such a good idea then why the f*ck don't they start with the Royal Bank of Scotland? The way it has been run in the past would lead me to think the lunatics have already taken over the asylum.
The Goverment do need to get a grip on the banking/investment industry ... However, it still doesn't change that the fact that this plan to redeploy the money used for remploy across other organistaions may increase headcount by up to 8 times and may benefit our industry/service sectors etc potentially haveing a knock on effect on growth.
In saying that though Pud, look at the mess Murray left Rangers in. He left them crippled to be fair. We have to be careful with disabled megalomaniacs as well.
It's a stuipid idea - how many employers are going to employ handicapped people against able bodied ones? Not many.
