Would You Move for Money?

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Today's front-page headline reads, "Cash incentive fails to entice job snobs west" (The West, 30 May 2012).

What an insult to the unemployed. Makes you wonder who pays the wages of reporters Andrew Tillett and Shane Wright.

Oh, that's right. Those employed reporters are paid a regular wage -- or perhaps a commission on stories -- by the people who control the daily newspaper. People who are, most likely, large-scale employers. Based in the west.

Imagine that you are unemployed. Living in Sydney or Melbourne. Consider the points for and against a move to Western Australia...

• The government pays you up to $9,000.
• The cost of moving house is several thousand dollars.
• If you sell a house in Melbourne or Sydney, you are selling during a real estate slump. You will not get much money. If you sell at all.
• WA is also -- supposedly -- in a real estate slump. Except that our houses are already hugely expensive. Expect to pay more that you received for your old house.
• Unless you plan to rent in WA... Well, forget it! Renters are fighting to pay exorbitant rents for a shared campsite in a caravan park.

So, imagine that you bite the bullet, take the government's money and lose a lot of your own. Now you are living in WA...

• You apply for a hundred jobs and are rejected for twenty of them. Thirty respond with an automated email telling you that your application has been received; there is no further response. The other fifty don't even acknowledge your application.
• So you are still unemployed, and further in debt.
• All your social support contacts -- family, friends, perhaps a priest, even your family doctor -- are "back home". There is now no-one to talk to.
• Your family moved with you. The children moved schools, lost all their friends. Your partner also lost all social contacts -- and lost a part-time job. You now have no income whatsoever and neither friends nor family to provide support.

Glory be! You get a job in mine construction!

• Now you are a FIFO worker. Two weeks stuck with fellow workers that you barely know. Doesn't matter, they keep changing anyway.
• Two weeks away from "home". Where your family now live.
• No way you can afford to move your family closer to work, houses near the mines cost millions. The company provides quarters only for employees.
• Your family hate living without friends, without extended family, without a parent for half the time.
• But you are earning a heap of money!
• But then, so are some of your friends back home, in the city where you grew up. Except that they are flying in and flying out from their "real" homes.

And then the construction work ends.

• You are unemployed. Again. The employer has shed you like an outgrown snake-skin.
• You own a house in WA. You have no close friends in WA. You have no extended family in WA.
• Your children and your partner have made a few friends. They have lived in the one house for a year or two. They are just beginning to settle in.
• Your only option is to move back to Melbourne or Sydney. Back to your extended family, your old friends. Back to the familiar place where you grew up. Back to a new house, a new debt.
• Your partner has had enough. Your partner and the children stay in WA.

But at least the government gave you $9,000 !

There's another little snippet in the business pages of today's paper: "Coles supermarket boss accepts $10m pay cut" (The West, 30 May 2012).

A Coles senior executive was lured from Scotland. The lure? $15million per year for a guaranteed five years.

For fifteen mill you could buy a new house in WA -- and keep the old mansion in Scotland. Your children could stay at the same school -- and fly "home" to WA for weekends. You and your partner could keep up with friends and family via regular short trips home... Why miss a nephew's birthday when the corporate jet is always on stand-by?!

Fifteen mill times five years... Would you move house for $75,000,000 ? That's almost as much as the average person could earn from a Nigerian scam...

I'm sure that the Coles executive suffered from many of the same personal and family trauma as would the "job snobs" of the east. 75 mill is an awful lot of sweetener, though the separation from a familiar environment may still be a problem. Still...

Would you move house for $9,000 ?

Independent thinking & independent analysis of your problems. Agamedes Consulting: Support for your thought. email nick leth at gmail dot com