| In 1941, the war time Minister of Labour and National Service, Ernest Bevin, set up a committee “to make proposals for a scheme for the employment and training of disabled persons”. It met under the Chairmanship of George Tomlinson MP for Farnsworth (now Bolton South – East) and reported to Parliament in 1943. There recommendations were included in the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act passed in 1944. This then became Remploy. As Britain ’s largest employer of people with disabilities, our knowledge and expertise is shared and valued by employers, Governments and other organisations throughout the world. Remploy has always been and always will be a unique organisation. we feel that what is being said about Remploy and the possibility of obtaining new jobs is totally idealistic but totally unrealistic in the current climate jobs are difficult to obtain for everybody and that a person with a disability cannot compete on equal terms with able bodied/hearing/sighted, frequently younger and higher educated people. This is not equal opportunity. Remploy is a community and support structure for all people with a disability now and for the future. This would be badly missed and add to the feelings of isolation, as those who had been in outside work reported bullying, discrimination and isolation (something that sadly is still happening). The Sayce review talks about choice but our choice is to stay with Remploy How can factories run with no funding? Having listened to all the ideas at a recent meeting we feel that this government is missing a great opportunity to develop a service that could be the champion of how to Employ; Respect; treat, and value disabled people. This would be starting from a solid base of a group of hardworking, enthusiastic and skilled workers and 65 years of experience. Now i am not going to make an argument that Remploy should be left as it is because it has history or that those employed here have nowhere else to go (both valid points to an extent), but rather that Remploy does need to change but should still be funded to some degree. At the Birmingham site we do make profit as do some other sites within Remploy, so the statements from the directors that in every site half the work force sits around all day is incorrect and very insulting. As we have more work than we can cope with and the only thing stopping us from making more profit is the VR and employment ban that both the directors and Department of Works and Pensions have forced upon us. Both the Birmingham and Coventry factory’s and branches are now in partnership with the West Midlands police force as a dedicated True vision reporting centre for hate crime/hate incidents for both our employees and the local community. We are in the process of setting up in the next few weeks as a cleaning academy, preparing/training disabled people to work within the cleaning industry as part of our yearly trainee target. This is something that all factories within Remploy do and something that Liz Sayce did not know. I know that the issues regarding Remploy are a lot bigger than just those sites that do make profit and that is why I accept change must happen, so I put to you that if sites such as ours were given more autonomy to make decisions then we could make even more profit and employ more disabled instead of requiring hundreds of thousands of pounds in subsidy we would only need a fraction of that. ES make a huge profit from training contracts but the factory’s receive nothing for the work that they do to prepare disabled people for work, so a payment for each trainee could be made to help those factory’s that are close to profit or break even. If branches were to be relocated into those factory’s that can accommodate them the cost of running ES would be reduced or they could pay the site rental but would save on services including security/fire monitoring, energy costs etc. Some sites should be set up as pure training centres for disabled people. All sites should be freed up from the company’s decision that you can only take on contracts for work that falls into your business stream i.e. a furniture site can not do anything that is not to do with building furniture (this has resulted in work being turned down). Central costs are astronomical and should be seriously looked at with a view of reductions as I am sure that we could still run as a company with two thirds of the costs that we incur at present. Thus reducing the £27,000 per head figure If ES were to return to being part of Remploy as a whole, then the £27,000 figure would be reduced to roughly £5,000 per head a figure that 95% of sites could achieve. Government should use article 19; regulation 7 to have more government contracts into sheltered/ supported Factories rather than having these taken away from them and even sent abroad, this has great potential for being cost effective and help the local economy. The Remploy name is already well known to the public, but more could be done on branding to make Remploy a household name and taxpayers who would fully appreciate what the government were doing to help disabled people into work Remploy could develop an apprenticeship scheme for young disabled straight from school or college along side their graduate scheme. This would fit in with government policy and young peoples aspirations. Remploy could then possibly, work towards being self sustaining and become a good example of British services, rather than the bad example of casting disabled workers out to compete on unequal terms within an already difficult employment market. Yours truly Robert Bradley Remploy Garretts Green Lane Kitts Green Birmingham B33 0UD 0121-784-5446 http://www.remploy.co.uk Remploy LTD. Registered office: 18c Meridian East, Meridian Business Park, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE19 1WZ. Registered in England & Wales no: 394532 Tel: 0845 155 2700 |