LABOUR accused the Tory- LibDem Coalition of throwing dis-abled workers "on the scrapheap" last night after ministers con-firmed plans to close a Remploy factory in Motherwell.
Another 26 sites across the UK will also be shut, making around 1400 disabled people redundant.
However, factories in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh have been offered a reprieve as they are among nine sites that could attract private bidders and will be put up for sale.
The Coalition said it could no longer afford to waste the millions of pounds a year the factories were losing. Workers made redundant have been promised help back into the workplace.
Motherwell and Wishaw MP Frank Roy said staff had been "thrown on the scrapheap".
Labour's Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne added it "beggared belief" the Government would choose to sack thousands of people during a recession, while one of his party's MPs called Maria Miller, the Conservative minister in charge of the plans, "Maria Miller, Remploy killer".
Mrs Miller said it was wrong to have a system of segregated workplaces for disabled people.
Unions said they expected the factories to be shut by Christmas at the latest. The GMB union intends to push ahead with a strike at Remploy next week.
GMB national secretary Phil Davies said: "To close these factories that employs disabled people in the present economic climate is a sentence to life of unemployment and poverty."
Dr Eilidh Whiteford, the SNP Work and Pensions spokesman, said there was little in the Coalition plans to show how they would get people back into jobs and accused ministers of rushing the process.
The Scottish Government pledged to "offer every assistance possible" for staff at risk.
A Department for Work and Pensions source last night said it was confident it could get many of those affected back into the workplace.
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