Sounds to me like if you don’t want to be a commodity, you should choose not to be one. And if you do choose to be one you should expect to be treated like one, for better and worse.
The problem with being a bit older like me 
is that your memory is long enough to know that the main achievement of unions has been the destruction of whole industries… I lost my first job at 16, Dec 1973, when the coal miners were on strike and we had power cuts on a few days each week.
In life, and in business, intelligent people take measures to avoid problems happening again (which is why most economic forecasts are junk) even if it takes years to implement them, and Scargill ensured that power generation from coal was something to be avoided at all costs, decades before we were all supposed to be “fashionably green” and started driving coal-powered electric cars
If a Ryanair pilot doesn’t like his job, he can get another one. And this is what they do as soon as they can
There is an endless supply of starry-eyed young people who want to be airline pilots. That is at the root of the problem discussed here. Ryanair and others just ride on the back of it.
Steve6443 wrote:
Any found to be flying (commercially) for one airline ONLY should be forced into employed status for that airline – no ifs, no buts.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison. I would understand being given employment as an option, but being forced out of self-employment/subcontracting and into employee status is something I refuse to accept. I am with Silvaire and Peter in this discussion, and I think unions are a tool of the workers – professionals (in the English sense of the word) don’t belong in them. An A320 airline pilot is not quite a professional in this sense, but standing a mere step away from it – making this step is switching to a little more adventurous kind of flying job.
The tax people are onto Ryanair pilots already
IMHO, this IR35 business would be quite problematic if Ryanair were UK based. Here the Revenue is aggressive on people working for one company the whole time and with various other indicators e.g. an employment contract.
It’s a problem more for the employer because upon a ruling of “non real self employment” he is deemed to have deducted the income tax etc and has to hand it over, while the employee walks away with a smile (and keeps the money). The result would be a big tax liability on Ryanair.
By and large I think we’re arguing without disagreeing. I take Peter’s point that unreasonable unions have had a lot to answer for. However, so have unscrupulous employers. Personally I can’t imagine playing hardball against the department of health. Professional negotiators against amateurs is never going to work out favoutably for the amateurs. I chose a different profession and there are only so many things a person can be good at.
Isn’t that the same situation as loco airlines? The working conditions (and hours!) of what I think are called “junior doctors” are unbelievable, with (IIRC) 72hr shifts with 2hr sleep breaks, or some such. If you weren’t young you would be walking dead. Yet, young men and women pile into the job. Some may do it because they want to work in the health sector, some may do it because they see the consultants’ Aston Martins filling up the hospital car parks…
Peter wrote:
The problem with being a bit older like me is that your memory is long enough to know that the main achievement of unions has been the destruction of whole industries… I lost my first job at 16, Dec 1973, when the coal miners were on strike and we had power cuts on a few days each week.
You should not generalise from a single example. In Sweden, the trade unions were instrumental in restructuring the Swedish industry during the 1960-1970s when traditional labour-intensive industries like clothing and shipbuilding were taken over by lower cost countries in the far east and were being replaced by technology-intensive industries.
The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) had a so-called “solidarity wage policy” meaning that all labour would get about the same wage increase regardless of the employer’s profitability. The unions held back their demands on profitable businesses and kept demands on unprofitable businesses. The effect was the companies in “dying” business areas went out of business fast as they couldn’t reduce labour costs while companies in business areas with better future got more capital to expand and absorb the labour from the failing businesses.
I have a few things to add to the discussion.
Ultranomad wrote:
[…] I think unions are a tool of the workers – professionals (in the English sense of the word) don’t belong in them.
I have only ever worked for one employer in which a union operated. I, like most of my professional colleagues, chose not to join. Years later I realised that this was a mistake. The union engaged in collective negotiations on behalf of members, and that was one of the reasons I didn’t join, but guess what… those negotiations ensured that union members got a minimum of a cost-of-living pay rise every year, while the rest of us got… excuses why a pay rise couldn’t be offered.
Ultranomad also wrote:
I would understand being given employment as an option, but being forced out of self-employment/subcontracting and into employee status is something I refuse to accept.
Personally, I have my own definition of what constitutes employment vs. self-employment. Obviously, these carry no weight whatsoever, other than it’s how I consider things.
Employed
Self-employed
For ad-hoc charter work, especially in GA, I can see how self-employment is perfectly viable. For airline work, other than very short term, i.e. covering other crew on sick leave, trialling new routes, or covering very short periods of peak-demand, I think this really ought to be considered employed status as very few if any of my personal self-employment characteristics would ever apply.
And finally…
Apart from the perceived missing tax revenue, which I suspect is HMRC’s (UK tax office) only reason for scrutinising Ryanair’s practices (and I don’t intend to get into that here), I believe there is a greater issue that should concern everyone: abusive employment practices.
It is my belief that many employers who engage in disguised employment do so in order to water down employment rights. In the EU, many of those rights exist to promote a healthy balance between work and private life and to provide employees with a level of protection against being over-worked or dismissed arbitrarily. Those rights are eroded through disguised employment. I imagine that most self-employed Ryanair pilots would prefer to be on a direct Ryanair contract if they were given a choice.
I imagine that most self-employed Ryanair pilots would prefer to be on a direct Ryanair contract if they were given a choice.
Probably not, because if you are contracting via your own limited company, you can pay yourself via dividends instead of a salary, so you avoid paying national insurance contributions (NICs).
I don’t know the current numbers but some years ago I saw a calculation showing that for a high earner, say £150k, you take home of the order of 7% more money if you draw the tax-free salary (£7k?) and for the rest you live off dividends. For a lower earner it is higher. Maybe a current accountant can throw some numbers in.
NICs are used to meter your entitlement to the State pension, so the benefit of avoiding NICs is not entirely what it seems, but for higher earners it is substantial. OTOH there is the argument that the State pension is (like the Child Benefit) a gross misallocation of taxpayer money (well, obviously that is the case for a retired airline pilot with long service) and may one day be rolled up into the DSS system 
Other perks of your own company is that you can employ your non-working wife/GF/etc (excuse the stereotype but you get the drift I am sure) for “admin duties” and utilise their tax-free bands. This is more provocative to HMRC especially if she is paid in dividends too – there was a big test case years ago whose outcome was, from vague memory, that not being married was essential
However an enterprising pilot can utilise the limited company for other stuff e.g. if he/she is an FI, do some training/revalidations in the GA sphere, do consultancy work, do ferry work, and all this will give you a nice spread of customers and help protect you from an attack under IR35.
I have no idea of Irish tax laws but they cannot be that different otherwise everybody with a shred of enterprise would be working via their own limited company
I fully understand the tax benefits of being self-employed. Despite this, I still think that a large number of Ryanair pilots would be happy to swap to employed status. The training captains might be on £150k, but the FOs certainly aren’t.
The self-employed Ryanair pilots will:
