Union calls for Remploy backing

The Labour party has come under renewed pressure to support the Remploy factory in Oldham to ensure the future of its workers.

Workers and campaigners gathered outside the annual party conference in Liverpool setting out their case amid threats all 54 factories could be sold to profit-making private companies.

Remploy is the biggest employer of disabled people in the country.

A report in July, which was welcomed by the Government, said its structure is out of date and the money would be better spent elsewhere.

The report, by the chief executive of disability rights charity RADAR, Liz Sayce, recommends concentrating funding on individuals through the existing Access to Work programme.

It said Remploy’s system of disabled-only factories was expensive. Instead it said factories and businesses would be opened up to private firms.

Speaking to the Chronicle, GMB union national secretary Phil Davies said: “The report said Remploy factories should close but these factories are lifelines for people.

“We want Labour to help us with our campaign to keep people in work. The last time there were closures 2,500 disabled workers were surveyed and a year later 91 per cent were on benefits and some suffered relationship breakdowns, and some ended up in prison.

“Things are worse now than in 2008, and people will just end up at the back of adole queue and be forgotten.”

The union wants the factories to be given public contracts to ensure they stay open.