Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Remploy, a firm which engages in a range of business activities and employs disabled people, has announced plans to close 43 factories across Britain. A total of 32 of Remploy's 83 factories will close and a further 11 will merge with other sites under the plans. Remploy operates sites that supply parts to the automotive industry, that manufacture household goods, and that design healthcare products amongst other things. It also functions as a provider of disabled employees for other firms.
Remploy says no disabled person will be made compulsorily redundant, but it wants to place 2,270 disabled people into mainstream employment. Unions called for the sites to stay open and criticised six disability charities who have backed the closures.
Remploy said 2,270 disabled people and 280 non-disabled workers would be affected by the closures in England and Scotland and Wales. However, the firm, which was set up in the 1940s and currently employs 5,000 disabled staff, said anyone who wished to continue working would be able to do so. Bob Warner, Remploy's chief executive, told a news conference the company's factories were losing around 100 million GBP a year.
Remploy said it had an 'ambitious' programme to transfer resources from loss-making factories to support more than 20,000 workers in mainstream employment. Mr Warner said every factory job cost more than 20,000 GBP a year to support. He said even after the closures it would cost around 9,000 GBP to subsidise each factory job and he could not guarantee there would be no further closures.
Phil Davies, national officer for the GMB union, said: 'We do not accept this level of closures and we will fight to maintain the current factory network. The trade unions do not accept the financial arguments that have been put forward and we are concerned at the way the company has conducted itself in the last few weeks, including leaking information to the media.'
Mr Davies said unions would consult their members but he raised the prospect of a national industrial action ballot across workers at the 83 factories.
Eurofound (2007), Remploy, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 65416, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://dev.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/65416.
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