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| TX: 20.06.05 - Remploy's wheelchairs PRESENTERS: WINIFRED ROBINSON AND PETER WHITE |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON We get call centres in India or designer trainers made in East Asia, outsourcing is a key to success in the global economy. But we've learned of a new example from an unexpected quarter - Remploy. It's a government funded organisation founded 60 years ago to provide jobs for people in the UK with disabilities. Peter's here with the story - Peter. WHITE Yes Winifred. Remploy was set up in 1945 and that was as a direct response really to the need for jobs for people who'd been disabled as a result of their wartime service. Now traditionally the work they offered was a mixture of manufacturing, light engineering, making of clothes, all sorts of things really, in a sheltered workshop setting. But particularly in recent years the whole emphasis has changed, the climate has changed, manufacturing has declined and most of the 9,000 or so people Remploy helps into work now are being placed and in many cases supported in open industry and that's the way in fact quite a lot of disabled people have said they want it anyway. Remploy receives a grant from the government to do this kind of work, which this financial year is £111 million - that incidentally is £5 million less than last year - and with that it still has the responsibility of increasing the number of disabled people in work but it's also expected to make a profit as a business. But is the need to make a profit taking precedence over finding jobs for disabled people in the UK? Well that's the view of Les Woodward of the GMB Union, which represents Remploy workers. Well I've been talking to Les Woodward and I asked him what they were suggesting was happening. WOODWARD Well Remploy are getting made wheelchairs from a factory in Taiwan that should be made in a factory in Ashington in Northumbria. WHITE What's the evidence that this is happening? WOODWARD We first knew about the wheelchairs being manufactured in China round about 18 months ago when we received copies of various invoices. And then the company opened up then and told us last year that they were having wheelchairs manufactured in China. WHITE And what are the reasons that Remploy are giving to you for why they're doing this? WOODWARD Remploy give the reasons for this action as being purely economical, that they could get the wheelchairs made in China far cheaper than they could in this country. But our position is that Remploy was set up to give disabled people meaningful employment in this country and if you were to take that argument right through then basically there's no justification for any Remploy factory to exist because we all know that the outsourcing of materials and goods is endemic in this country and they've now told us that the wheelchair manufacture from China is going to cease. WHITE But what's been the effect on the workforce up to now, as far as you're aware in terms of numbers? WOODWARD The numbers in the Ashington factory have decreased by somewhere in the region of 10 or 12 people. These people have left the factory for various reasons - retirement, ill health and what have you - but they haven't been replaced, they haven't been replaced by other disabled people. The factory, at the moment, is in a situation of decline. WHITE Is your argument that this goes against what the purpose of Remploy was when it was set up? WOODWARD Well yes it flies in the face of the whole ethos of what Remploy was set up to do. Remploy was set up to provide disabled people with employment in the UK, not to provide custom for Chinese manufacturers of wheelchairs. WHITE Well of course Remploy argues that nowadays the biggest part of its role is placing people in open industry and that it's got to make the most use of the money it gets from the government and buying parts in England, which are more expensive than the whole wheelchair being purchased from China, isn't good economics. WOODWARD Well I mean we're not convinced of that argument. There were somewhere in the region of 10,000 wheelchairs coming into this country and the quality of them was so poor that they had to set up a rectification plant in the Aberdare warehouse and sometimes we were seeing up to 50-60% rectifications on the products that were coming in. WHITE So you're saying the wheelchairs are in some cases having to be radically altered to bring them up to standard? WOODWARD They have to be altered, whether radically is the right word or not I'm not sure, but there were some that merely needed adjusting and there were some that needed stripping down and rebuilding. WHITE Do you think this in any way compromises the funding that Remploy now gets? WOODWARD My own personal opinion is that it does, Remploy get from the government £115 million, it's not proper use of the money that Remploy get. WHITE Are you suggesting that Remploy's departing from its original purpose of creating jobs for disabled people? WOODWARD What I'm suggesting is that Remploy is very much departing from the original ethos of creating jobs for disabled people in a manufacturing environment on Remploy sites. What they're doing is going into the training and employment agency sector at the expense of Remploy factories. WHITE So that's the view of the representative of GMB. So how does Remploy respond to these allegations? Listening to that interview is Bob Warner, chief executive of Remploy, who joins me now. Bob Warner, the most serious aspect of this surely is that this is work which disabled people were doing here and could do so why send it abroad? WARNER Well you made the point at the beginning Peter that most of the jobs we create these days in Remploy are with other employers and we created three and a half thousand last year, which was a 40% increase on the year before. So in terms of Remploy's remit and what we're seeking to do, we are providing good money for the taxpayers. WHITE Nonetheless your remit is also to look after the more vulnerable people who are in workshops, so what sets you apart from other companies and justifies a grant of £111 million this year if your prime purpose isn't to find work for disabled people? WARNER Our prime purpose is to find work for disabled people, the real debate is about how we do it. Last year the number of people employed in our manufacturing operations fell by just 44, that's 44 out of about 5,200, so we have been maintaining our manufacturing base but it is tough in manufacturing in the UK and these wheelchairs just exemplify that, it's not just how Remploy finds in competition but how the whole of UK manufacturing has. We can buy the assembled wheelchairs in from China for 25% less than we can buy the parts in from the UK. So before we even start putting in labour costs or factory costs we would be losing money on those chairs. WHITE But does the economic argument work if you had to actually rectify them or put them straight when they come back to this country? WARNER All the rectification is paid for by the supplier and it's nowhere near the percentages that Les was talking about, so there's no extra cost to us for rectification. So the thing we have to decide is how we best use the taxpayers' money and one way of using it is to create jobs with other employers, another way is maintaining the rest of our employment base and we've got some good businesses where we can - we can employ disabled people at a relatively modest subsidy. But employing people to do this work where effectively the value of the wages that we would have to pay would be not - none of it would come back in terms of extra value for the product, it's just not a good use of people's time. We are still manufacturing the top end of the range wheelchairs at Ashington and doing very well on that but this bottom end of the range chairs are just really - it doesn't make sensible use of taxpayers' money. WHITE Some people are afraid - the GMB representative included - that this is actually the thin end of the wedge, what you're actually doing is running down these workshops and that when a job like this comes along that could be outsourced - and after all you could outsource all sorts of things, it's happening in this country - that they will gradually whither on the vine and die? WARNER I think that's the point Peter, we could outsource all sorts of things but we don't, this is a half of a percent of our turnover, which is outsourced, which it's a big cause célèbre, so it's clear that we're not doing that. We are not running down the workshops, we're trying to create a balance between the opportunities that we've got with other employers where it's a lot cheaper to provide jobs for disabled people and maintaining our manufacturing businesses. I think the GMB position is that - and they've said it - all that really matters to them is manufacturing jobs in UK Remploy sites, I don't think that's what matters to disabled people, we can't fight a battle for UK manufacturing, we're fighting a battle for jobs for disabled people instead. WHITE But some of the people who've been in Remploy jobs for many years aren't going to find it easy to find work in open employment, aren't they the people who are going to suffer if this sort of policy's going to be adopted? WARNER We've not made anybody compulsorily redundant. The wastage that Les talked about of 10 or 12 jobs was just natural wastage. WHITE But they weren't replaced were they, those jobs weren't replaced, so for less able people those might be jobs that aren't available in open industry? WARNER Well those jobs - in that same period we've created 300 jobs in the North East with other employers, so yes they were replaced, they weren't replaced in Ashington, but actually they were replaced at some of our other factories as well, as I said our total employment of disabled people in the factories fell by 44, so some factories go down, some factories go up - that's just the way it's been in the last year. WHITE What's the situation now - is this outsourcing still going on? WARNER No, it is going on but we're bringing the work back, as I said it's a very small percentage of what we do and it's become a bit of a cause célèbre. So although it is going to cost us money and it isn't a particularly good use of taxpayers' money we really want to concentrate on what we want to do and what we need to do for the business and so in order to avoid conflict with the union we're bringing this stuff back so that we and they can get on with our main task of creating jobs for disabled people. WHITE Okay, well thank you very much indeed Bob, thank you. We will be returning to this issue, we're hoping to be talking to Anne McGuire, who is the new minister with responsibility for disabled people, we've put in a request. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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