BHP Strike Month Two: What You're Being Forced to Sell to Survive

Six weeks in, the group chats tell the real story. Not the union updates, not the company statements. The chats where blokes from the same crew are quietly asking if anyone wants to buy their second ute before the bank comes looking for it.

Month one of the BHP strike was survivable for most. Redundancy buffers, a bit in the offset account, maybe some annual leave paid out. Month two is a different animal. Strike pay from the union, where it exists, is sitting somewhere around $250 to $300 a week for most members. That covers groceries and not much else once you're carrying a mortgage, a car loan, school fees and a partner who's picked up extra shifts at the local IGA just to keep the lights on.

So the toys are going. Then the tools. Then, for some blokes, things that were never meant to be for sale.

The Marketplace Cull

Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree listings out of the Pilbara, the Bowen Basin and the Hunter Valley have quietly filled up with FIFO gear over the past three weeks. Jet skis. Dirt bikes. Camper trailers bought outright two Christmases ago when the roster was flush and the overtime was rolling in.

A bloke in Karratha listed his 2019 Yamaha jet ski for $9,500 last week. Bought new for $16,000. He took $8,200 cash three days later because he needed it gone before the rego renewal hit. That's not a bad deal by market standards, jet skis depreciate hard anyway, but it's not the point. The point is the timing. Nobody sells a jet ski in the middle of winter unless something else has run dry first.

Same pattern with second vehicles. The classic FIFO setup, a work ute for site and a second car for the missus and kids at home, is getting cut back to one. A 2021 Ford Ranger with 60,000km on the clock, still owing $34,000 on finance, sold privately for $38,000. Sounds fine until you remember that's the family's only spare vehicle now gone, and the $38,000 barely clears three months of missed strike-adjusted income once tax and dealer fees are accounted for.

The numbers get uglier the newer the asset. Anything bought in the last two years on finance is underwater the moment it needs to be sold in a hurry. Private buyers know a distress sale when they see one, and they negotiate accordingly.

Tools of Trade, the Last Resort

This is where it gets serious. Tradies on site, boilermakers, fitters, auto electricians, carry tens of thousands of dollars in tools that are genuinely theirs, not the company's. A decent trade toolbox with cordless Milwaukee or DeWalt gear, welding equipment, diagnostic scanners for the auto sparkies, can easily sit at $15,000 to $25,000 replacement value.

Those tools are now showing up for sale too, and that's the bit that should worry everyone watching this strike drag on. Selling your second car is a financial setback. Selling your tools is selling your ability to earn once this is over, whichever way it ends. A fitter in Mackay listed a near-complete Snap-on tool chest, the good stuff, for $6,000 last week. He'd spent close to $14,000 building it up over four years. He needed $6,000 by Friday, not what it was worth, and that's exactly the gap distress sales create.

"You don't sell your tools unless you've already sold everything else," one boilermaker on a Bowen Basin crew page wrote. "That's the line. Once you're past it, you're not thinking about the strike anymore. You're thinking about next week."

What Things Are Actually Fetching

The gap between what's owed and what's realised is the part nobody talks about in the union meetings. Here's roughly what's playing out across the classifieds right now, based on listings and yarns from workers in WA and Queensland:

• Boats: A 5.5m tinnie with a 90hp outboard, bought for $28,000 eighteen months ago, selling for $19,000 to $21,000. Still owing around $22,000 on the loan in most cases.
• Camper trailers: $18,000 off-road hybrid campers going for $13,000 to $15,000, mostly to grey nomads getting a bargain at exactly the wrong time for the seller.
• Second vehicles: Anything under three years old is selling close to fair value because demand for used utes is still strong. Anything older is getting lowballed hard because buyers can smell a forced sale.
• Motorbikes and dirt bikes: Barely holding 60 percent of purchase price, and that's if they've been well maintained.
• Trade tools: The biggest gap of all. Tradies are getting 40 to 50 cents on the dollar for gear that cost them full price, because buyers know exactly why it's being sold.

None of this accounts for the finance still owing. A worker who sells a $38,000 asset with $30,000 owing on it walks away with $8,000 before fees. That $8,000 might cover six weeks of a mortgage. It doesn't touch the strike if it runs another two or three months, which is exactly the scenario a lot of Pilbara and Hunter Valley families are now planning for.

The Maths Nobody Wants to Do

Here's the sum that's keeping people up at 2am in the donga, or now, at home in the spare room because the swing's cancelled and there's nowhere else to be.

A typical BHP operator on a good roster, say an 8/6 with decent overtime, might have been clearing $140,000 to $160,000 a year. Strike pay, where the union fund is holding up, is roughly $1,000 to $1,200 a month depending on membership length and fund health. That's a drop of somewhere between 85 and 90 percent of income.

Against that, fixed costs don't move. A $650,000 mortgage at current rates is still around $4,200 a month. Two car repayments might be $1,400 combined. School fees, health insurance, the FIFO-specific costs like storage for a boat or a caravan that isn't getting used anyway. None of that pauses because BHP and the union are still at the table.

Selling the jet ski buys a month. Selling the second car buys two or three. Selling the tools buys a bit more, but it also mortgages the recovery, because when this strike ends, whichever way it goes, the workers who kept their trade gear intact go straight back to earning. The ones who sold it are looking at a $10,000 to $15,000 rebuild before they can pick up a second job or a side hustle to claw back the shortfall.

The Part That Doesn't Show Up in the Classifieds

There's a psychological cost here that's harder to put a number on but just as real. A lot of these assets weren't bought carelessly. The boat, the jet ski, the camper trailer, they were the reward for years of hard swings, missed birthdays and Christmases spent in a donga instead of at home. Selling them isn't just a financial transaction. It's watching the tangible proof of a hard-won lifestyle get handed over to a stranger for less than it's worth, during a dispute that has nothing to do with whether the buyer deserves a bargain.

Partners are feeling it too. In a lot of FIFO households the person at home has been managing the budget around a roster and an income that was, for all its flaws, predictable. Two months of unpredictability, on top of a partner who's suddenly around the house full time and stressed, is its own kind of pressure that doesn't show up in any strike pay calculation.

What's Worth Doing Instead, If You've Got the Runway

For workers who haven't hit the tools-for-sale stage yet, a few things are worth doing before the classifieds become the only option:

• Ring the bank before a repayment is missed, not after. Most major lenders have hardship arrangements for exactly this kind of income interruption, and a temporary interest-only period is far better than a default sitting on the file.
• Sell the asset with the least earning consequence first. A jet ski that sits idle nine months a year matters less than a trade tool that's earning $80 an hour on the tools.
• If a move is on the cards once this settles, whether that's a new site, a different roster, or a region with a lower cost of living, it's worth having a proper look at what's actually out there before locking in another mortgage-sized commitment. The Australian mine map is a decent way to compare rosters and camp conditions across the country without relying on rumour and forum chat.
• Talk to the crew before assuming you're the only one selling gear. Most of the shame in this situation comes from thinking it's a personal failure rather than a predictable outcome of a strike that's gone longer than anyone budgeted for.

Two months in, this strike has stopped being about picket lines and become a household balance sheet problem for thousands of families. The Marketplace listings are the visible tip of it. What's happening underneath, tools sold below value, second vehicles gone, the slow erosion of the buffer that took years to build, is the part that'll take a lot longer to rebuild than the strike itself takes to resolve.