For example, it was announced in the last few days that Remploy, which has more than 50 factories employing 3000 mainly disabled people, will be encouraged to offer voluntary redundancy to staff, in a bid to save money. At first sight, it seems harsh to close off an employment option for a group of people who often find it more difficult to get a job, and one of my correspondents also pointed out that local government is buying in from China many of the products that are being manufactured by Remploy, and perhaps it would make more sense to support local jobs and local suppliers.
However, if you look at the numbers, they make depressing reading. It is estimated that each Remploy factory job costs £25,000 in government subsidy. Half of the people employed are being paid to do nothing, because the management has failed to win enough contracts to keep them occupied. Despite receiving £555 million of support, Britain's largest nationalised manufacturer cannot, apparently, operate profitably.
There are plenty of different arguments to be had here. For example, Remploy may not be very good at manufacturing or selling, but they do have an excellent record in supporting people into work with other employers. 24,000 people have found jobs with their help, and they have added 38,000 vacancies during the past financial year. There is a strong case for nurturing this activity, rather than putting more money into the factories.
Equally, many people feel strongly that mainstream businesses should be employing more people with disabilities; that a great deal of talent and enthusiasm which should be helping Britain out of our financial mess is being lost because, despite many years of equal opportunities legislation, it is still more difficult to find a job if you have a disability. The rider to this argument is that Remploy factories are not providing proper jobs but a sort of day care, which is not only expensive, but rather demeaning to their employees. There isn't much that can beat the satisfaction that comes from doing a job that is worth doing, while turning up for work but not having anything much to do is soul-destroying.
On the other side, at a time when the public sector is cutting jobs, and many are beginning to question the oft-repeated assertion that the private sector will pick up the slack, pulling the rug out from under a significant employer, even if imperfect, is not helpful, and indeed sends out the wrong message when the focus of benefit reform is very much on getting people back into work. If major purchasers (local authorities, housing associations, the NHS) of the products made in their factories, from building products to mobility aids, placed contracts with them, then they would be securing jobs, supporting British industry, reducing environmental impact by buying local, and giving a vote of confidence to an organisation that must be feeling beleaguered. The government is looking increasingly heartless, as deficit reduction is pursued apparently no matter what the cost in human terms: this could be an opportunity to change that perception.
No easy answers, I fear. Should we be maintaining jobs at Remploy at any price? Or is it better to allow this business to succeed or fail by its own efforts, without regard to social implications? Is a Remploy factory an employment ghetto or a valuable source of jobs for people who would otherwise struggle to find one? You can share your opinion by adding a comment here.
It must be better to spend money that helps to keep people in work, rather than making them unemployed at a time like this.
ReplyDeleteI think the government should be supporting manufacturers like Remploy, just like we supported the banking industry!
You cannot blame this government for this situation, successive governments policy was spend, spend, spend; this policy had to come to a sticky end. Allan
ReplyDeleteFrom what I have seen of government funded manufacturing I am not surprised they cannot survive without subsidies. I have found them to be uninspiring, and wound so tight in red tape internally and externally that it is not easy to return even an operating profit.
ReplyDeleteI am speaking generally, but as a rule government dalliances into commerce are disastrous and riddled with conflicting views and consequentially there is more spent on researching and reporting on value for money than tax money spent on operational value adding contribution to the bottom line.
Business is NOT a democracy. Businesses, even co-ops, have to unite behind one leader, one common objective and one common goal - be it profit, education, research or whatever, there has to be a mission. In my 20 odd years of serving government organisations, I have not seen one yet that runs itself as a corporation has to.
My opinion is that localised social enterprise that works with people, for people without shielding them from harsh reality, is much more valuable to society and the individual. I believe that giving a person money and tools, and the knowledge and training to succeed will not necessarily ensure success, but training, tools, and nature with some nurture for good measure, will create a society which will be self reliant, and create the great nation of entrepreneurs, manufacturers and skilled labour we once enjoyed.
I believe (as an offshore prospector, on occasion in my career) that globally we compete on a pretty even playing field as a rule. The difference is attitude. For example when I was in China, the attitude was "yes". In Germany, it was "yes if you do it our way" in Britain it is "yes if the council will let us". Perhaps despite my deep concerns about the current administration's strategy, it is indeed the sharp reminder that Granny is no longer around and mummy is at work, so we now need to pick ourselves up and put our own plaster on that scratch. No one person has the answer.I do believe that government-funded low yield projects are a thing of the past. But I also believe in 8 years, we will do it all over again.....I believe that the MOST vulnerable members of society are losing out because the breadth of scope of what constitutes a vulnerable member of society is now so large it is impossible to differentiate, and so block cuts that inevitably leave some people to find other sources of income/lifestyles who would be categorized as vulnerable to even the most hardened of us are unavoidable.
The really hot potato is £7bn overdraft @ 2% is a bit of a legacy from the last government, and is disproportionate compared to income (GDP). I believe in the cuts. I have fallen foul myself. I worry that the cuts may be a little too deep too soon, but nothing any of us say will change their minds...they all live on planet MP surrounded by moats, duck houses, Aston Martins, twin expense claims and so it is hard for them to see the real impact - from any party.
Anything that involves cuts, redundancies and reduced employment opportunities for those people that need the help most is obviously a bad thing.......but in the current climate it's hardly surprising and what other options do these organisations have?
ReplyDeleteThere's less money around and savings need to be made but when you see a football club spending a reported £50 million to have 1 person come work for them then you do have to question the way our society runs. Financially these things have to be done, I guess, but morally?? And what will the long term implications be....what is the long term plan for these people whom need additional help to achieve what many of us take for granted......surely it wasn't that long ago that we were being told that getting people back to work saved us money........no easy answers is exactly right I'm afraid......
I think the question of morality is one we can all ponder until the cows come home. At the end of the day would you cross the road to save a duckling, whilst leaving your farmyard gate open?
ReplyDeleteDoing that would save one duckling but the wolves would soon be in slaughtering your stock, and whilst the duckling is eating the last crumbs off your table, you have no food to feed the family. But the duckling is safe and warm...
We need to get a grip of the issues at hand, we have systems in place that care for those in need. The cuts are deep and hard, but whilst we have been playing at being a social state, the wolves have stolen our breakfast, and so something needs to be done or we will be in the dole queue behind Greece and Ireland, and hoping there is enough left in the EU pot to pay our electricity bill from Russia, our gas bill from Ukraine and our fuel bill from America.
The UK needs to look inwards, get real, balance the books and move forward. What has gone has gone, look forward not back. People will survive - we survived a couple hundred thousand years before the welfare state existed, and we will again.
Financial crisis is not the worst thing that can happen...and I think we may just avoid one if we stand strong after all, we are British, we pioneered and shaped this global society, and we can shape the future.
he problem is explained simply by the statement there that Remploy are not good at manufacturing. Which is the fundamental requirement of a manufacturing company.
ReplyDeleteCombine that with the fact that they are importing from china (as is everyon...e else) then the uk manufacturing aspect will be defunct.
We now employ 50% of less abled people in our workforce. And yes we have had to adapt and ensure that ourworkplace is conducive for disabled requirements.
But obviously for a related business it was the best decision we made.
I firmly believe that more employers , in mainstream and general industries, should recruit less abled staff.its all about the employer changing their preconditioned views on what less abled people can or cant do !!
I mean Glen in our office is confined to his powerchair. But he now completes our admin,telesales and can also demonstrate ...our mobility products to anyone coming in the showroom.
as long as we remember to keep an avenue of travel clear for him.
(and not to place the air con control on its rather high wall bracket)
Then he is able to carry out 95% of tasks an abled person can.
I know it sounds obvious but a physically less abled person is not automatically a mentally disabled person !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remploy supporting people into work with other employers, hahahaha! Good one!
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I got a mainstream job, entirely by myself, in the gap between being referred to Remploy by a Jobcentre DEA and Remploy actually bothering to call me. By the time I heard from them I'd already been working several months and arranged my own support from Access to Work. I wasn't a particularly fast mover, they just have a particularly slow response time.
Didn't stop Remploy trying to claim that they'd "helped" me into employment.
Didn't stop Remploy offering me money to falsify evidence to "prove" that they had "helped" me.
Didn't stop Remploy refusing me access to a complaints procedure when I said that wasn't acceptable.
I wrote a blog post about it. In the comments, several ex-Remploy employees admitted that making the figures look good was the name of the game.
I also alerted my MP and an internal investigation found that I was just one of a batch of at least 16 others who should not have been included in the statistics.
One wonders how often this has happened before, and how many people just did as they were told, signed the documentation and collected their £50.
I am surprised that Remploy has been notified that they are to lose their Government subsidy. I don’t know what proportion that amount is of their overall revenue, but it does seem an excessively large sum.
ReplyDeleteRemploy fulfils an important part in helping disabled people find employment and as we all know, having employment is a lot more than just earning money. Enhancement (Agencies) Ltd – IPER Division only came into being through our local Job Centre asking us to run re-employment “Job Seekers” programmes for disabled people in our area and it didn’t take long to learn that support for service to the re-employment of disabled was very limited.
It would be helpful if these unknown Civil Service “Bean Counters” who conjure up these cuts were asked to consider them whilst they were living in the same circumstances as the people they are going to directly affect – They may then consider a broader picture.
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ReplyDeleteSince Frances wrote her blog, from talking with an undersecretary at the DWP, I understand that funding for Remploy, £555 million over a five-year period, may be ring fenced.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to suggest that the original impression that funding was being cut is misleading, but Frances is waiting for clarification from Remploy, which will be published here as soon as it is received.
The situation with regard to DWP funding for Remploy has now been clarified.
ReplyDeleteSince the organisation embarked on a five-year modernisation plan, the government has committed £555 million of support. This money has been guaranteed, and is being paid at an annual rate of £111 million until 2012/13.
For anybody with a concern about how well tax-payer resources are being invested, it is interesting to compare the cost of Remploy finding a job for somebody (£3600), with the subsidy for a job in one of their factories (£25,000).
Further justification for concentrating efforts on employment services rather than manufacturing – though that will be of little comfort to those facing redundancy.
It is cheap for Remploy to find jobs for people because they don't do the work. They just take the credit when actual disabled people find their own jobs through their own advert-scouring and application-filling and interview-attending.
ReplyDeleteDo you understand? I, and many others like me, are counted as success statistics for Remploy, but that does NOT mean that Remploy Employment Services "found us jobs"! It only means that there's an automatic referral system between JC+ and Remploy, so anyone who gets a job is a "client" of Remploy whether they like it or not.
The cost to Remploy is the admin cost involved in tracking those referrals. Too right it's cheap.
It makes me very angry when someone implies that Remploy are the ones doing the work, actively "finding" jobs and making employment possible.
This is crazy – what are these poor people going to do – we should be encouraging Remploy to manufacture items that we are currently purchasing from China and India – I think the main problem with Remploy is the management – they have been complacent and this organization has lost its place in the world.
ReplyDeleteIf they can manufacture items in this country even if the factories have to be subsidised then at least it is giving employment to people who would find it very hard to get a job otherwise.
From a green point of view we are not having to bring these products half way across the world using tremendous natural resources to do so therefore making some savings.
As oil prices increase and standards of living increase in China it will in fact be much more economic to produce items in this country than it will be to import them – by that time we will have no manufacturing base in this country at all – hold on to something before it is too late
Frances Leckie this article is utter rubbish.
ReplyDeleteI’m a former Remploy worker and was the FOC during the Remloy factory closures.
The divisional managers cost and the (fit costs those employed in the Factory but not disabled) were added to the cost per disabled worker. t
I wrote to Peter Haine Secretary of State for Work and Pensions 2007.During Remploy factory closures. I still have the letters.
Saying that the employment figures for disabled people were being inflated.
When I actually looked into the figures 16 hours per week was being classed as a full time job for disabled people?
The explanation was that in light of a persons disability 16 hours per week was classed as a full time job for disabled working tax credits entitlement.
Thus 2 disabled people working 32 hours per week in total were counted in the employment statistics as 2 disabled people working full time.
This was used in a number of ways.
It made the employment figures for disabled people look better than they actually were.
Disabled employment agency such as Remploy,these figures to inflate their efficiency figures, for placing of disabled people in full time employment thus enabling them to claiming more money from the government.
Remploy was a able to use these skewed figures to close Remploy factories. down throwing disabled people onto the unemployment register.
My advice to you check your facts or find a new job.
"Anonymous" - great to have your specialist knowledge here, albeit without identifying yourself. You make some very interesting points.
ReplyDeleteFacts were checked with both the Remploy press office and DWP.