"Remploy
factories are not for sale or closure" GMB rep vows to fight
closures
Les Woodward, National and Wales Remploy
Convenor
09 March
The announcement of the
closure of 36 Remploy factories and the privatisation/closure of
a further 18 in the near future has left Remploy workers bitter
and angry.
Les Woodward speaking at NSSN conference
©Paul Mattson
Angry at the fact that whole consultation farce was a sham and
bitter because a vast swathe of the disability lobby have
allowed themselves to be used by the Government to add some sort
of justification for an act that is quite patently
unjustifiable.
The disability lobby says that the Remploy model of employment
of disabled people is out dated and disabled people do not want
to work in “segregated employment.” With the unemployment
figures growing almost daily, over a million youth unemployed
and 13 jobs being lost in the public sector to every one made in
the private sector, the stark truth is that most working class
people with disabilities would love a chance for employment
either in a Remploy factory or any where else. The other stark
reality in the UK in 2012 is that the rather limp promise of
full support for Remploy workers to find alternative work is
nothing less than an illusion. There are few if any jobs out
there, less full time jobs and even less jobs going with the
same level of understanding support and quality of terms and
conditions that are trade union negotiated in Remploy.
This attack on the most vulnerable group of workers in society
by a vicious nasty little Government made of public school toffs
who will never know what life is really like in ConDem Britain
in 2012 illustrates quite starkly the lengths that the ruling
class will go to, to prop up their sick ailing and doomed rotten
Capitalist system.
Remploy receives £111m subsidy to employ disabled people, sounds
a lot of money but put into context, the UK government probably
spent that in a couple of hours bombing the living daylights out
of the Iraqi people.
With jobs in jeopardy, benefits being cut, and no possibility of
employment, Remploy workers have no alternative but to fight as
hard as they can to protect their jobs and their factories and
it is a fight that we will be taking straight to the Government.
Remploy factories are not for sale or closure
