A UNION will refuse to negotiate over calls for voluntary redundancies at a firm which employs dozens of disabled people in the region.

Remploy has factories in Gateshead, in Spennymoor, County Durham, Newcastle and Sunderland.

Yesterday, bosses said the business had suffered because of the difficult economic climate, with many factories operating at less than 50 per cent capacity.

As a result, Remploy is not fulfilling its mission to provide sustainable employment opportunities for disabled people, said a spokesman.

“Our factory businesses have suffered the effects of the current economic climate and do not have the level of business that we need and anticipated,” he said.

“The company is constantly examining ways of improving efficiency and has announced that it plans to offer voluntary redundancy to employees working in our enterprise businesses and central services.

“This scheme is voluntary and every employee will be able to choose if they want to apply for the severance package.

“We will ensure that any employee who decides to leave and wants to continue working, will have guaranteed support from our employment services to find another job.”

However Ken Stubbs, a worker at the Spennymoor Remploy factory and the North-East branch secretary of the GMB Union, said: “What our members want is restructuring of the company, not redundancies and we will not be negotiating.

“Putting a voluntary redundancy package together is very expensive and we believe we can make cost savings greater than that by restructuring.

This isn’t the right route to go down. We are more concerned with the future of the factories rather than redundancy money.”

All of the 43 staff at the Remploy factory in Spennymoor are disabled while in Sunderland 41 out of a workforce of 43 are disabled.

Gateshead has 17 disabled staff while the factory in Newcastle employs 86 workers, 79 of who are disabled.

Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman, who chaired a cross-party back bench inquiry into planned closures at Remploy in 2009, said: “A few years ago we ran a campaign to save the Remploy factories and one of the things that came out of that was what huge support there was for our factory in Spennymoor.

“The overwhelming priority is that there should be work opportunities for people with disabilities, and the Government, in taking its decision, must not salami slice and undermine Remploy because it is so important.”