Nearly three-quarters of the workers laid off by Remploy have failed to find steady jobs over the past two years, according to a survey by the GMB union this week.
Former staff at the state-owned manufacturing company, which employs disabled people, have also struggled to find jobs which pay as well or with pensions.
And a union official accused the Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for Remploy, of using misleading figures for the number of people who had found jobs.
The findings come almost exactly two years after the company began a process of factory closures and redundancies, which has seen some 2,500 workers laid off by the company and 29 factories closed or merged.
Of the 735 former Remploy staff in the survey, 74 per cent said they were not currently in work.
In 2007, then Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain said that workers leaving Remploy for jobs outside would have their pay and pensions protected. But over five times as many people who responded – 154 to 33 – said they no longer received a pension, as said they did.
Steve Sargent, deputy convenor of the Remploy joint trade union group, said: “Those guys have to present themselves at job shops and events and they can be pretty much badgered into accepting a job that’s totally unsuitable.
“They maintain that a permanent job lasts up to a week. It’s not different people finding jobs, it’s different jobs. If they say they’ve found 7,000 jobs, that would be fine if it were 7,000 people, but it might’ve been shared between 4,000 people. The message has got to be, to the MPs, the ministers and the DWP: the figures from Remploy don’t add up.”
Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said they had not received any support from Remploy since leaving the company.
“People really don’t know what to do,” Mr Sargent commented. “They’re supposed to get support from Remploy and as you can see there’s very little confidence in that support and a lot of people saying they’ve had no support at all.
He added that more redundancies could be on the way, according to a Remploy executive: “She said there are 54 factories left and 27 of those factories have no work. In any other company those factories would close.”
GMB officials are expected to raise the survey with disabled persons’ minister Jonathan Shaw next week
by René Lavanchy
Nearly three-quarters of the workers laid off by Remploy have failed to find steady jobs over the past two years, according to a survey by the GMB union this week.
Former staff at the state-owned manufacturing company, which employs disabled people, have also struggled to find jobs which pay as well or with pensions.
And a union official accused the Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for Remploy, of using misleading figures for the number of people who had found jobs.
The findings come almost exactly two years after the company began a process of factory closures and redundancies, which has seen some 2,500 workers laid off by the company and 29 factories closed or merged.
Of the 735 former Remploy staff in the survey, 74 per cent said they were not currently in work.
In 2007, then Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain said that workers leaving Remploy for jobs outside would have their pay and pensions protected. But over five times as many people who responded – 154 to 33 – said they no longer received a pension, as said they did.
Steve Sargent, deputy convenor of the Remploy joint trade union group, said: “Those guys have to present themselves at job shops and events and they can be pretty much badgered into accepting a job that’s totally unsuitable.
“They maintain that a permanent job lasts up to a week. It’s not different people finding jobs, it’s different jobs. If they say they’ve found 7,000 jobs, that would be fine if it were 7,000 people, but it might’ve been shared between 4,000 people. The message has got to be, to the MPs, the ministers and the DWP: the figures from Remploy don’t add up.”
Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said they had not received any support from Remploy since leaving the company.
“People really don’t know what to do,” Mr Sargent commented. “They’re supposed to get support from Remploy and as you can see there’s very little confidence in that support and a lot of people saying they’ve had no support at all.
He added that more redundancies could be on the way, according to a Remploy executive: “She said there are 54 factories left and 27 of those factories have no work. In any other company those factories would close.”
GMB officials are expected to raise the survey with disabled persons’ minister Jonathan Shaw next week.
The only place you can read all of Tribune's articles as soon as they are published is in the magazine. To find out more about subscribing from as little as £19,
click here.
