COMMENT: JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
IN between all the voices fronting the clustered microphones and cameras peddling their politically correct responses was a flash of reality from Mayor Darryn Lyons.
“Politicians have gone on for a long time, ‘You’re a resilient bunch down there’. Well, I’m getting a bit fed up with resilience,” he blurted.
It highlighted the continuing gulf between our elected representatives and leaders and the rest of we 180,000-or-so workers and our families.
The cumulative effect of the series of job losses suffered throughout the region can perhaps be more truthfully measured in confidence than dollars.
We know there will be a direct “economic impact” on the 800 Alcoa employees losing jobs later this year, with a flow on for another who knows how many who do business with the aluminium behemoth.
But there’s a different flow on for all of us: we now know for certain that no job is safe.
If giants like Alcoa, Ford and Shell can become victims to the changing times and all disappear within a year of each other, what hope is there for businesses with fewer resources?
Everyone knew the day was coming but hope still lived to the last, even among the Point Henry workers who crunched the daily production numbers.
Those hopes have now been dashed. Reality, rather than resilience, is the order of the day.
As workers, we know there is no point to the blame game or playing politics with people’s livelihoods.
What we need are options; options for those to be shortly in the job market but options also for others who have already been on the employment hunt for months, even years.
Resilience pays no mortgages and puts no food on the table.
