REMPLOY PICKET.

      Most of us are aware of the devastating effect the government's cuts can have, but probably none wore than those employed by Remploy.

This from The Commune:

       There used to be over 50 workers at the Remploy factory in Preston, now reduced to only 18, each of them was out on the picket line for the second day of their national strike, 100% turn outs were also reported at Heywood and Wigan. Support came from BAE and Rolls-Royce workers as well as teachers, passing council refuse workers and ex-Remploy workers who had taken advantage of previous redundancy packages.

The government has been Orwellian in claiming they are helping disabled people into work whilst sacking them from their jobs. In Preston the workers were shown 6 job opportunities to apply for, each of these positions turned out to already have been filled. One ex-Remploy worker had found work on the railways and promised 20 hours a week of work, only to be told upon arriving for his induction that he was only going to be offered a zero hours contract.

The site at Preston carries out socially useful work, recycling computer equipment that ends up being re-used by the Department for Works and Pensions amongst others. Bidders from the private sector have actually offered to take over the factory but their cases have not even been entertained.

As they have proved themselves ‘fit for work’, the Remploy workers could face a bleak future without Employment Support Allowance and be forced into Workfare schemes. “We have been thrown on the scrap heap”, one worker said.

For more info see  Remlpoy Workers

ann arky's home.

HOUSING BENEFIT.

       

        Read this on Guardian on line and thought it said what we all know and feel but put it rather eloquently.

Why do the young need housing benefit? Let their parents keep them.

DrPorkbeast 25 June 2012 2:20PM

The Big Fat Lie.

          It was not the banks and their casino business practices paid for by borrowing other people’s pensions. It is not the idle undeserving rich who own 90% of the wealth despite only paying a fraction in taxes if any at all. Its not all our politicians who were bought by big business years ago and championed the gambling addiction of the banks.

     No the Big Fat Lie is that it was your fault people. You are lazy, addicted to welfare, demotivated to take up the hundreds of thousands of full-time high paying jobs that employers have to offer. Its often the immigrants fault because they are easy to spot on the whole and even easier to scapegoat as 20th century history warns us. Also you voted for - insert party you hate here – and they have destroyed our economy with their –insert your very own cretinus world view here. Also its is Europe that has beggared us as if the French were personally responsible for Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns. What about foreign aid, or the disabled’s unreasonable demands to have access to a job like at Remploy. Yes little people it as your fault and now you must pay with your pensions, services and freedoms.

      No we need to funnel even more money from the bottom to pay bankrupt Zombie banks billions in UNSECURED loans. To achieve this we need to stop the poor from going to university or receiving training (EMA). We need to make the disabled compete on “a level playing field” in the job market, scrap funding for libraries and council run crèches. Stop the unemployed from living in social housing, push them into the landlord’s greedy hands. If they need to move to work they can always sleep under a bridge. Whats more our military industrial complex needs your taxes to invade foreigners and bomb them back into the Neolithic past. We have been at war forever it seems. War on communists, war on drugs, war on Argentineans over a rock and some Penguins, war with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan (again), war on terrorists, war on wedding parties for some reason and more to come. Welfare is expensive but death from above is not cheap either.

     Why do they lie? Because they are a class of rich expensively educated out of touch toffs who hate ordinary people. Don't be old, don't be ill, don't be unemployed under the Conservatives. All they have to offer is lies, lies, self serving lies.

I would amend the last bit to read:
        "Don't be old, don't be ill, don't be unemployed under CAPITALISM. All 
They have to offer is lies, lies, self serving lies."

 ann arky's home.

CLOSURE OF REMPLOY FACTORIES.

A late appeal from the STUC.

Thur 22 March - Protest against the closure of Remploy factories.

From 9.00am, Apex International Hotel, 31-35 Grassmarket, Edinburgh.

Letter from STUC:

           The STUC has received correspondence from the GMB regarding Liz Sayce’s attendance at the Scottish Union for Supported Employment Conference this coming Thursday, the 22 March. They are requesting support from the trade union movement to mount a demonstration outside the Conference at the Apex International Hotel, 31-35 Grassmarket, Edinburgh from 9.00am onwards. Liz Sayce who is Chief Executive of Radar was the author an independent review into supported employment as a result of which the coalition Government made the recent unacceptable announcement to close Remploy factories placing the livelihoods of hundreds of disabled workers at risk.

          This is perhaps one of the most callous acts by the current Government and the STUC and its Disabled Workers’ Committee would urge affiliates to join the demonstration if possible.

           The STUC has supported all the trade unions in Remploy throughout their campaign to protect the jobs of vulnerable workers, including a substantial and visible presence at the front of the March at the People First March and Rally on October 1st. .

         We realise this is late notice but any assistance that your organisation could provide in publicising this demonstration would be gratefully received.

Yours sincerely

Ian Tasker
Assistant Secretary STUC

ann arky's home.