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Around 40 jobs are set to go at Bristol’s Remploy factory after the Government announced plans to shut more than half the factories, which employing mainly disabled workers.
The decision was described as “barbaric” by a union leader last night, as it emerged more than 1,700 – often vulnerable – people across the UK would lose their jobs.
Minister for disabled people Maria Miller said the Remploy board is proposing to close the sites by the end of the year because they were unlikely to achieve independent financial viability.
She said the £320m budget for disability employment has been protected, adding that the money will be spent more effectively.
Despite support from some disabled charities, who backed the idea of ending the “ghettoising” of disabled people, politicians and union leaders attacked the plan.
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: “This is a barbaric decision. The Government has sunk to a new low. To choose to cut these jobs only a few days after the Government passed the Welfare Bill is proof it has no intention of helping the most vulnerable in society. Instead the coalition is only making life worse.
“In the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, these workers’ prospects of finding work are almost zero.”
Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said it was “disappointing” the Department for Work and Pensions announced the closures in a written statement rushed out after Prime Minister’s Questions, denying MPs the chance to quiz David Cameron on the “callous decision”.
Remploy was established in 1945, opening its first factory in Bridgend, Wales. The Bristol factory is in St Philip’s.
Remploy’s initial aim was to help former servicemen disabled following action in World War II. Over the following decades it established a network of factories across the UK making a wide variety of products, and in the late 20th century it moved into service businesses.
The Government believes the £320m budget can be used more effectively instead of subsidising loss-making factories.
