Les Woodward, Remploy trade union national convenor
The closure of 54 Remploy factories potentially can affect everyone in the UK. Disability can strike anyone in any socio-economic group, at any time. The difference is not the disability but the available resources to deal with it.
If someone has a big bank balance, a Bupa account and plenty of time for rest and recuperation, the effects of disability will be less damaging than those felt by someone who is on the breadline, on benefits and struggling to make ends meet.
This attack on the most vulnerable workers in society will do nothing to help get disabled people out of poverty and into work, it will do nothing to improve the economic stability of the country. It will do nothing for the ‘inclusion’ agenda that most disabled workers, including those in Remploy, aspire to.
What this act of barbarism will achieve will be misery, poverty and possibly an early grave for the vast majority of Remploy workers. These workers will be paying the ultimate price with their jobs for the economic crisis.
This is unlike the multi-millionaire bankers and their very good multi-millionaire friends in the cabinet who are doing very nicely out of this crisis.
Remploy factories are not for closure and not for sale at any price.
