This mass-firing by Ryanair of all its Dutch personnel is an excellent example of the problem that labor mobility poses the ideology of free trade:
Ryanair has fired all its pilots and cabin crew members based in the Netherlands after they did not agree to be ‘voluntarily’ relocated to bases as far-flung as Morocco and Belarus.
The Irish low-cost airline officially filed for the collective firing of all personnel at the Dutch Employee Insurance Agency (UWV), an autonomous government administrative authority that handles unemployment benefits.
Ryanair cites bad economic results for its Dutch base at Eindhoven, which was closed on 5th November, as the reason for the mass-dismissal.
To realize the full benefits of free trade, there can be no limits upon workers moving to where they can be most efficiently employed. It doesn’t matter if you don’t speak Ukrainian, if your family doesn’t want to relocate to Morocco, or if your ancestors have lived in Eindhoven for hundreds of years. If it is more efficient for the airline to fly from Belarus or Rabat, then you must go and live there or lose your job to a more cost-effective Moroccan pilot.
That’s not merely how free trade works, that’s what they mean by the necessity of immigration and the free movement of peoples. Of course, it will, incidentally, result in the complete destruction of every family and every national bond, but then, as Jordan Peterson reassures us, group identities are pathological anyhow, so it’s really for the best.
I addressed the issue in tonight’s Darkstream.