FORTIBUS is Latin for 'with the strength'.

Persons over 40 who are unfortunate enough to become unemployed discover that it's extra hard to find work because of their age - and receive little useful support from government, institutions or even friends.

Government offers little help - an unemployment benefit far below poverty level, that helps pay rent for some - for the benefit of the landlords rather than the tenants? - but forces home owners with mortgages to sell their homes. It puts people through a humiliating and degrading process of registering for assistance, not so different from applying to a workhouse of the 19th century; it offers no reskilling schemes worth the name; no assistance to access employment opportunities outisde your own area; and most disgraceful of all, absolutely no effective legislation to discourage the present overt and widespread practice of age discrimination against us by employers.

And Government smudges and twists the national unemployment statistics. If an unemployed person can be reclassified into a permanent disability or other category, they come off the unemployed statistics. If an unemployed person elects to do a NEIS course, he/she continues to recieve the dole while dropping off the unemployment statistics. A person who works one hour is considered 'employed' for that month.

At our age, the first fine flush of bulletproof optimism of youth has usually been eroded, worn away by life itself. If we were casual workers, or labourers, our bodies are starting to become less strong, and younger workers have the same skills and are directly competing for our work. If we were in a career path that suddenly ended, our acquired skills seem outdated or inappropriate to another employer.

You write, phone or visit perhaps five possible employers each day - I know that I do. It's no small job to put together a considered job application, particularly for a public service-type job, or for a management job in the private sector. It's easy to spend three hours demonstrating how you meet the detailed selection criteria, and then composing a positive, optimistic covering letter to sell your benefits to the employer - three hours concentrated work for one single job application. 

Then how disheartening and depressing it is to get no response, or to receive some crappy form letter, 'personalised' by word processor, but patently impersonal, saying you are not good enough for them. How depressing it is to get five or more such rejections in every mail. How frustrating it is to hear that such-and-such a job that you saw advertised and spent so much time and effort applying for was just those already employed insiders wasting my time and breaking the law - or at least bending it - by 'going through the motions' and that there was an insider earmarked for the job, but public service regulations demanded that 'open competition' be used to fill the position.

How true is the feeling that, if your age seems to be over 40, your applications is immediately rejected. Filed in the WPB. Dustbinned.

Paranoia? I doubt it.

Why does this situation exist? Because Government responds only to pressure groups, and the unemployed - particularly those over 40 - have had absolutely nobody to speak for them - until now! We are scattered throughout all of Australia, each bearing his or her terrible burden of frustration, grief and despair alone, perhaps with the help of family, or perhaps with no support at all, since family and friends often disappear when the going gets tough.

So what can be done about this? Join FORTIBUS today and we will organise and fight together for out right to have a decent, normal life through employment. FORTIBUS will formalise its credentials - that is, it will prove that it speaks for those persons who actively want to work, who are seeking work, out of the actual 30+% of all Australians who are either out of work, or working several casual jobs with neither security of income or usually any award protection - certainly with no dependibility of income. Considering that each Federal and State MP represents less than one percent (1%) of the population, a collective voice of the more than 30% of ALL Australians will demand hearing. 

And those of us who are denied employment - which is economic disenfranchisement - will fight to get our just entitlements.

With a single, united voice, of reason, pleading - not for their present contemptuous cold false charity - but for a fair go, for equity; and if neccessary, with a single, mighty fist - with the strength!