Ryanair brandishes a wage freeze: the Iran war, at the pump and in the pay packet

According to the BBC, Ryanair is floating a possible freeze on its employees' wages and a rise in fares. The reason given: fuel could cost €2 billion more in 2028, unless the American-Israeli war against Iran comes to an end. That is what the dispatch says. It does not detail the timing, the possible size of the fare increase, or which categories of staff are affected. All of that remains to be established.

The rest is our reading.

Cui bono? Not the pilots, not the cabin crew, not the baggage handlers. A war is launched in Washington and Tel Aviv, and the bill lands on the payslip of a worker in Ireland or Spain. The logic is clear: conflict, pressure on oil, dearer fuel, squeezed margins, frozen wages. Geopolitical risk is pooled and pushed downwards. The profits, meanwhile, stay private.

Let us be precise. The dispatch does not say Ryanair is lying, nor that fuel will not cost more. But note the mechanics of the message. A management that announces a wage freeze conditional on a war turns a distant conflict into an argument for internal negotiation. The employee did not vote for this war. Yet they are asked to finance it.

This is where theory earns its keep. Lenin saw in imperialism the rivalry of great powers for resources, markets and spheres of influence. The Gulf and its oil routes are the classic illustration: whoever controls energy controls everyone else's costs. The states waging this war serve strategic and economic interests that have nothing to do with those of a Ryanair employee. The consequences, however, do not stop at the borders.

Engels described the industrial reserve army: that mass of available workers used to keep wages at the level capital finds convenient. In a company that thrives on tight costs, the threat is implicit. If you refuse the freeze, others are waiting. The war simply provides a fresh pretext for an old practice.

Luxemburg, for her part, warns us: concessions wrested by workers are taken back as soon as profits demand it. A wage freeze is not a natural disaster. It is a balance of forces. The real question is therefore one of organisation. Will the company's unions accept the blackmail of the "economic situation", or will they see an opportunity to pose the opposite question: why should workers pay for a war whose shareholders hope it ends, but whose arms budgets are delighted?

One more thing. Behind this debate about aviation fuel lie deaths, displaced people, cities hit. The dispatch says nothing of them, yet they are the starting point for everything else. That war can also be measured in euros on an accounts ledger must not make us forget what it is first and foremost.

"Peace", for its part, would be the best pricing policy. But nobody puts it on the menu.