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hating life today
1. My MIL, who we rarely talk to, and has only seen our son twice and for less than half an hour at each visit (and she doesn't live far away), who has disowned family members for not following her religion, just emailed my husband and told him that she and her drug addicted, child molester, store-robbing-and-cashier-assaulting son will be moving to our city after he is released from jail. It never fails to shock me that she bends over backwards for this kid but won't speak to my husband's other brother (and barely speaks with my husband) for religious differences. This BIL has beat her up, stolen all her stuff more than once, has committed armed robbery a couple times, beat up the 16 year old cashier in a store he was robbing because the girl pressed the alarm button, and even sexually molested his own niece. I will not allow this guy in my house or to meet my son, and after our son was born my MIL flipped on me about this, shocked that I wouldn't welcome him into our house. We haven't spoken to her since early December. She was in town and was going to come over but BIL (the one she won't speak to) was over so she cancelled. She said she'd come over the next day but never did. When my husband called her she said she was "too tired". Because we speak to her so infrequently I wouldn't worry about her moving close except that she seems to think that my husband can "cure" his little brother and always expects him to, so I think she'll try harder to get us to see him... 
I am so furious about this. She seems to think that living here will cure him
2) My husband has been laid off from his real job for two years next month, although he does work with a different department with the same company when he is laid off from his real job (the new job sucks though). He was recalled four weeks ago and promised that this recall would be for good. He was just laid off again, along with 15 other people. The disgusting thing is that it's the union who is laying them off- the same people he pays union dues to. There is a clause in the agreement that says that the union decides how many people work, and fewer staff means more work for the senior guys. The senior guys want to work (literally) the most they legally can for their industry, which translates to 100 hours a week (4 24-hour shifts) and demand that junior guys are laid off to facilitate this. The kicker is that there is also an agreement that everyone who is working will make a minimum of just shy of $90k a year, even if they only work once a week. The union could let everyone work and make $90k a year to barely work but no, they want junior guys laid off so senior guys can work 100 hours a week for $120k. When the company does keep everyone working the senior guys complain that $90k is "starving" their families and that they deserve to work as much as they legally can. We get emails every week from the (senior) union rep, reading about how he can't pay his bills and 15 people need to be cut and blah blah blah... it's horrible.
My husband could hold his real job in another city. We've talked about moving but I never wanted to because my family is here. But with his BIL and MIL moving here and the latest layoff I'm actually considering leaving. I'd miss my family so much though, and so would our son...
Re: hating life today
No, unfortunately. The closest cities to us that have a terminal he could work at are Jasper and Vancouver. He doesn't have enough seniority to hold a (good) position in Vancouver, and although he could in Jasper, there isn't much for affordable housing there... even $90k wouldn't cut it I'm afraid. Both cities are about 4 - 5 hours away at any rate, so we couldn't really see my family often even if we did move there. The cities we were considering are in northern BC, or Calgary. I really don't want to move. I love our house (which I think we'd take a bit of a loss to sell), I love that my family is so close, but...
Ugh, this all blows. Sorry your MIL is such a douche.
I understand what you mean about the senior employees wanting everything though. I see it first hand in payroll. Our electricians or welders all want to work 80 hours weeks so they can make 130-150K and then they whine we hire more staff to avoid overtime expenses which is our companies biggest expense. They whine that they can not afford to live on 100K salaries. I just look at them like they are retarded and say well maybe you should sell your Ski doos, snowmobiles, trailers, big rigs, etc, etc that you have all these payments on and then you could afford it just fine. Then they look at me like I am retarded, its much fun.
OMG. Yep, that's exactly what we're dealing with. Most of the most senior guys have grade 10 educations and 6-figure salaries. One guy told my husband not long ago that he spent $10k on a fancy fountain for his backyard. This, mind you, was while he was ranting that my husband and the other junior guys should be laid off. Just last week two senior guys asked my husband why he bothered coming back and my husband said "For the paycheques" (the job he works when laid off doesn't pay near as much) and the two guys laughed and said that the paycheques sucked, they couldn't pay the bills. Hello? The average family income where we live is like $55k. All these guys have fancy cars and boats and everything else. You'd think any sane person would jump up and down about working one day a week for $90k, but not them...
The saddest part too is that these guys had it in their contract that they could not be laid off, ever, for any reason. So 15 years ago or so when improvements in technology meant that half of the jobs were eliminated, these guys were "laid off" but still collected paycheques! This went on for nearly 10 years, until retirement reached high enough levels that all these guys could hold a job again. The union agreed to scrap this clause so that anyone hired after 1994 does not have this protection, but they're still clueless. About a year ago my husband was trying to level with the union rep who was calling for more layoffs, basically begging him to quit calling for cuts. He told my husband "We've all been there, suck it up. When I started I only worked a couple weeks out of every year for a good five years and I didn't complain that senior guys should give up work so I could make more." My husband said he had to fight to keep from pushing this guy in front of a train- when the union rep was "laid off" for five years, he still collected all his paycheques. It's not even remotely close to the same thing. The fact that he could even compare the two shows how delusional these guys are.
Oh, man, what an awful position to be in, on both counts. I'm sorry you're dealing with crappy in-laws and such a frustrating job situation.
I don't really have any suggestions. I don't think I would move five hours away from my family because of these things, but I'm not in your shoes, so it's hard for me to say.
Good luck...