Remploy: Again, disabled people are told they are “not viable”

Yesterday, after months and months of uncertainty, the Government announced that they would close 36 of its 54 Remploy factories, with potential compulsory redundancies of 1,752 people, including 1,518 disabled employees.

Remploy fulfilled a very important role in society. It played the very role our coalition government endlessly claims they value the most. It placed some of the most disadvantaged, most vulnerable disabled people in work. More than that, in many cases, it provided work that disabled people could do.

Often giving structure and social value to the lives of people with learning difficulties or severe mental health problems, the sad truth is that many of these workers would not have been employed elsewhere.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for Remploy. All disabled people would be able to compete on a level playing field, finding work to suit their skills and abilities. They would be embraced in the workplace, supported where they have additional needs and helped to achieve their full potential.

Anyone who thinks that this is possible in 2012 is simply living in a fantasy land.

Just as those in Westminster potter off to breathe the rarified air of their out of touch bubble, sometimes disability campaigners like myself can risk calling for policies based on ideology, not reality. I could argue that integrated workplaces are always better than segregated ones. I could argue that segregated workplaces reinforce the idea of the “other”, that creating low skilled jobs that are not “financially sustainable” simply keeps the most disadvantaged away from the uncomfortable glare of those who are more able.

But the important – perhaps crucial – argument about Remploy is that the disabled people who use the service want to keep it. They have been campaigning as hard as I have. They manned their stalls at Lab conference with passion and pride. They handed out leaflets, tried to educate people who only saw one side of the story. They have campaigned endlessly on Twitter and with the help of unions. As workers. Workers with as much right as you or me to work in an environment that suits them, doing work that fulfils them and gives them purpose.

In a time of full employment, there may have been an academic argument to be made for slowly aiming to integrate these workers into the wider workplace. It would still have been an academic argument. It would still have been an argument crafted by non-disabled people, convinced that they know what is best for those who are less able. It would still have caused suffering and uncertainty, upheaval and doubt. But perhaps, just perhaps, it could have been done with a degree of compassion and commitment that eased those doubts.

In the worst recession since the 30s, at a time of the highest unemployment we have seen for a generation, at a time when young, fit, degree students cannot find work, what hope is there for Remploy workers? The government claim that there will be transitional help. Maria Miller, Minister for Disabled People claimed,

“The Government will reduce its current subsidy to Remploy from the beginning of the new financial year so that we cease funding factories which make significant losses year after year and restrict funding to those factories which might have a prospect of a viable future without Government subsidy.”

And there’s the rub. Some of our most disadvantaged workers were not financially “viable”. No matter that Remploy made them socially viable. No matter that Remploy was often the only chance for profoundly disabled people to be independently viable.

In the language of fascism, these people should have made more profit.

1,752 people not relying on benefits. 1,752 people paying tax. 1,752 people given the chance to be the best that they can be. Did anyone do the maths? Did anyone work out exactly how much the scheme saved or did they simply look at a balance sheet, simply take a company performing a role that no-one else would do and judge it against Tesco and Asda?

Again, disabled people are told they are “not viable”. Does this language not strike fear into the coldest heart? Does it not make us pause for a moment and wonder what the alternative to “non-viable” is? We are “Not viable” as “claimant stock”, not viable as “Super-users” of the NHS, not viable as taxpayers, not viable as profit-turners, as creators of wealth. And that is the only form of “viable” this Government seems to understand.

In about 2 years’ time, the work market will have been presented with around one million people with disabilities or terrible illnesses who face a significant disadvantages to work. They will have no choice. Unlikely to be “fit for work” in any sense an employer might accept and understand, these people will need support, understanding and opportunities, just to survive, their state support casually stripped away. Yet still no-one is prepared to ask how this will happen. What work we might be able to do. How best the world of business might adapt to embrace those who cannot “work” within the same structures and buildings that most people take for granted.

Businesses are not sanctioned to employ a proportion of disabled people here in the UK as they are in Germany and elsewhere. They are given no tax breaks or grants to ease the burden on their balance sheets. No-one is educating business leaders to show them just how productive and loyal those with disabilities or illnesses can be. No-one is discussing flexible working beyond an able-bodied view of “Full Time” or “Part Time”. No-one is suggesting a revolution in working from home. No-one has set up a business model that would allow sick or disabled people to be entrepreneurs. No-one is suggesting a disability taper of earnings, to stop many of us being too afraid to risk the small support we do get. No-one is suggesting education or training in any real sense that might help us find work more suited to our abilities.

That is the shame. That is the part of this whole mess that shows our policy makers for what they are – across all parties. Strip away the support, with no thought at all for the future and you are simply consigning anyone who is less than perfect to a life without hope. Possibly to no life at all.

All stick and no carrot. All judgement and no empathy. All speaking for us, no-one speaking with us.