UK Government’s financial cuts will hit to the Disable workers

Almost 2,000 disabled employees are to be made surplus after the Government declared it is withdrawing its multi-million-pound financial support from the government-hold disability organization Remploy.

In a decision explained by unions as "barbaric", ministers verified that equal to 36 of Remploy's 54 industrial units across the UK would be closed down by the end of this year. When in resistance, both the Employment minister Chris Grayling and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg had assured to keep the factories open.

Employees at one of the Remploy factories were saddened to hear the news of closing down. But in a statement Maria Miller, minister for the Disabled, claimed that the yearly £68m government financial support to Remploy could be improved spent on other projects to help out the disabled into work and said the decision had the support of disabled groups.

She pointed out statistics suggesting the yearly cost to help out each Remploy employee was £25,000 a year, compared to the equal £2,900 cost of its Access to Work scheme.

She said that government would promise £8m to support find new jobs for those suffered by the shutting down. On the contrary Labour and the unions said it was shocking for the Government to be making 1,700 disabled employees’ surplus at a time of growing unemployment.

"This is an offensive pronouncement," said Unite general secretary Len McCluskey. "The Government has sunk to a new low. In the severe economic catastrophe since the 1930s, these employees' views of finding work are almost zero."

Remploy was established after the Second World War to give manufacturing jobs in a secured environment for disable people.

Employees are employed in enterprises that differ from furniture and packaging making to recycling electrical home appliances and operating CCTV systems.

But the corporation operates at an annual loss of £68m – in spite of paying out £1.5m in bonuses to its higher managers last year – a large number of whom are able-bodied.

Ms Miller said the move followed a self-governing assessment by Liz Sayce, chief executive of Disability Rights UK, into the way the Government pays out its disability employment budget.

Her report resulted the Government's £320m budget could be improved spent on the Access to Work fund, which gives technology and other assistance to company’s employing disabled workers.

Government sources also claimed that "separated employment was no longer suitable in the 21st century".

In a spontaneous Commons statement called after the pronouncement, Ms Miller protected the "difficult but significant" move to cut subsidy for Remploy. She told MPs: "The present system is not utilizing the money that we have obtained most effectively. In these harder economic circumstances we have to look at that very cautiously."

The shadow minister for the Disabled, Anne McGuire, said 1,752 people concluded they were losing their job by a written statement "and from time to time through telephone calls from MPs".

She added: "I have the largest respect for Liz Sayce and some of the work she did, but honestly to present a closure program putting 1,752 people on the dole, potentially, on the footing of a report by an entity is frankly not adequate."

Remploy will soon start discussing with unions on the planned shut down of the 36 factories and on the potential obligatory redundancy of 1,752 people at the sites, most of them disabled employees.

Amid the factories intimidated with closure are those in Leicester, Manchester, Aberdeen, Newcastle and London. The other 18 Remploy factories, illustrated as "potentially feasible" and employing 910 people, as well as 706 with disabilities, will continue sharing a decreased financial support while they are being evaluated for a future "outside government domination".

Phil Davies, of the GMB union, said: "These industrial units have lacked support for years and have never been appropriately loaded with sufficient work to make them inexpensively feasible."