Search results

Remploy was set up in 1944 to provide meaningful work for those wounded in the Second World War within a company created to cater for their special needs with the financial and social benefits that employment brings. The company has built a thriving business based on providing a range of invaluable services to British commerce, industry and the Health Service. It used three groups of workers in packaging and assembly, furniture and medical equipment, and leather and textile products. In 1981 Remploy dropped its national marketing operation in favour of a policy which devolved more responsibility from headquarters to its front‐line management. The work and success of the packaging and assembly group is discussed in the context of this flexible approach.

All production engineering is a daily challenge, but at those factories run by Remploy (a Treasury‐backed, non‐shareholding industrial company, limited by Government guarantee) it combines the usual need for constant problem‐solving, with a demand for the sensitivity and dexterity of a juggler on a tightrope. For some 92 per cent of the Remploy employees are on Section 2 of the Ministry of Labour's Disabled Register (the registered disabled persons in open industry all come under Section 1), and this means that they are technically labelled ‘unemployable’. Remploy, the brain‐child of Ernest Bevin, which was started in 1945, and so celebrates its twenty‐first birthday this year, has proved that label false.

Focuses on Remploy, which seeks to find employment for disabled people. Discusses Remploy’s work in PCB assembly and the role of the well‐motivated staff in ensuring high‐quality products.

A new learning strategy is helping to improve the status, confidence and career opportunities of employees of a UK company that finds productive work for around 6,000 people with a wide range of mental, emotional and physical disabilities. Remploy, which has existed for more than 50 years, is a highly flexible commercial enterprise that supplies 50 percent of the UK’s FTSE top 100 businesses. The firm also supports a further 4,500 disabled people in partnership with employers such as Asda, Tesco and J. Sainsbury.

This paper examines the development of adhesive journal binding in the UK and reports on an extensive trial of Remploy's adhesive binding in the Edward Boyle Library for Science and Engineering journals.

The proliferation of e‐learning is challenging the convention, not only of where and how it is possible to learn, but also of who is able to learn. For a number of the UK’s disabled, those whose early education either was not completed or was not even possible, online courses have enabled them to finally close the gaps in their education and gain the skills necessary to further their careers.

Supported employment enterprises (SEEs) are commercial enterprises that provide meaningful, gainful employment, training and development opportunities for people with a disability. Hence, SEEs are run specifically to provide employment. SEEs, with the exception of Remploy, represent a unique sector of SMEs owned and run by local authorities and charities. The Supported Employment Procurement and Consultancy Service (SEPACS) provides SEEs with per capita funding for disabled employees, capital grants for premises and equipment, grants for marketing research, business advice and performance monitoring. SEPACS is part of the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). This paper presents some case studies of SEEs in the Yorkshire area. The work explains the complex dificulties facing these organisations and illustrates the different approaches used to cope with these situations. Many SEEs are under threat of closure or radical change in their function as employers of disabled people. This work investigates these issues through selected illustrative case studies. The general weakness of marketing strategies and plans in these organisations is highlighted and related to the impact of SEPACS and local authority policies and practices. This work establishes the important role that marketing strategies and plans could have in ensuring the future survival and growth of these companies.

Remploy's hidden asset One of the most infuriating characteristics of industry is that the labour which companies have to lay off when times are bad is seldom still available when business picks up.

Focuses on institutional discrimination in employment and explains why anti‐discrimination legislation is the most likely solution. Defines institutional discrimination against disabled people, then provides substantive quantitative evidence of institutional discrimination in employment. Examines the main factors which cause that discrimination, and finally evaluates government policies relating to disabled people’s employment.