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A disabled worker at Remploy Bookbinding, Newcastle-under-Lyme. Photograph: Don Mcphee for the Guardian
The cuts get personal
Disability
This article is more than 11 years old
Remploy closures: an act of callous cost-cutting dressed up as progressive
This article is more than 11 years old
Les Woodward
Closing Remploy factories will not save disabled workers from 'Victorian-era segregation'. It will wreck lives
Fri 9 Mar 2012 17.30 GMT

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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. Angry at the fact that whole consultation farce was a sham, and bitter because a vast swath of the disability lobby has allowed itself 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lobby says that the state-owned Remploy, which offers employment in their factories for people with disabilities, is outdated and disabled people do not want to work in such "segregated employment". Yet 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 anywhere else for that matter.

Remploy workers are also angry at Iain Duncan Smith, who states that there is no justification for the government subsidising "Victorian-era segregated employment". Mr Smith is about as far removed from the reality of working in Remploy in the 21st century as the very workhouse masters he refers to. The factory where I work has modern woodworking equipment, we produce high-quality furniture for the education, care home, secure unit and healthcare sectors. Our colleagues, who are all disabled and some have complex support needs, can set and operate sophisticated machinery that will machine wood and timber products to accuracies of a hundredth of a millimetre.

We cannot understand the logic of the government's arguments for closing Remploy. We wholeheartedly support the idea of integrated workplaces for people with disabilities and we have done for many years. We also, however, recognise that for some disabled people, and for many reasons, supported-employment sites like Remploy are more suitable and provide the best employment opportunities.

We also recognise that the individual is best placed to decide for themselves what employment options are best for them. People without disabilities have that choice; to close and privatise Remploy factories is depriving disabled people of that employment choice.

Disability charities, and some groups in the disability arena, see a very selfish opportunity to share in the cake of funding that the government has ringfenced to employ disabled people. They see a massive opportunity to take up some very lucrative business from the government/Department for Work and Pensions in the wake of Cameron's "big society" agenda, where the volunteer sector takes over where public services left off.

It is clear that the government is using ill-founded opinions to try and justify the unjustifiable action of closing 36 Remploy factories down quickly, and closing or privatising the remaining 18 within the next year. It is also clear to us, despite assurances by the DWP to the contrary, that the closure of Remploy factories is linked in to the cuts and austerity measures imposed on the working class to pay for the greed of the bankers and financial institutions, who got the world into this mess in the first place.

The closure of Remploy factories will mean misery, hardship and a future of worsening health and early graves for some disabled workers who will be affected. Cuts in healthcare, benefits, and a wholesale rolling back of the welfare state will have the most devastating effect on some of the most vulnerable members of society. During the last closure of Remploy factories, some union reps had the harrowing experience of having to deal with threatened suicides by those people who felt that their world had ended and life was no longer worth living.