Fark.
The most amazing thing about this post is that this STILL COMES UP FOR DISCUSSION when it should be a dead issue.
It is like the 'turning downwind and stalling' debate.
There is nothing in it, yet fresh CPLs are STILL asking this question because the cloth eared gits that 'run' the entry level aviation 'businesses' still do not understand the legal environment they operate in, nor their responsibilities as employers.
Allow me to state it once and for all.
Way back in a dingy classroom in what is now UniSA's School of Business, I was a student in Bill H*****'s undergraduate course Australian Industrial Law 1.
The basics. The stuff that all industrial practictioners and most employers know.
It was being delivered by a former Commissioner of the federal Industrial Relations Commission, a man who had his name on some groundbreaking IR cases, not some ivory tower academic.
I will never forget him asking the question in a tutorial covering a case study about some sandwich makers, 'what separates an employment contract from a contractor relationship?'
When half the class pussyfooted around, not understanding the question or not having done their reading for the case study, he was red faced and shouting!
"This is a contract for PERSONAL SERVICES! A contract for a PARTICULAR PERSON to do a job! It is an EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT!!!"
So. This is the stuff you learn in first term of a first year, undergraduate course in Industrial Relations.
The WAGENET excerpt with numbered questions that Wing Root quotes is simply a way of testing whether the relationship is one of contract FOR services or contract OF service, an employment contract.
So, as Woomera says, it is a dead issue.
Any employer that presents you with a 'contract' for flying services is a fool and bordering on a criminal.
They are certainly not 'businessmen.'
I put them in the same category as blokes who spike drinks to get a root.
Answer this: if such 'contracts' were truly a more flexible and effective way of running flying businesses, why the hell do we not see them for QF and
VB pilots, why don't senior public servants and mining company executives not have 'contracts for service' rather than employment contracts?
Why not?
Because they are a one way deal that offers none of the benefits that a worker in a first world country could expect.
Professional pilots work under awards, enterprise bargaining agreements, certified agreements, and australian workplace agreements, which offer varying levels of flexibility and protection.
BUT they all have clauses giving the pilot the protection that most Australians believe is their 'right.'
Example as per above.... you are doing circuits at a GAAP aerodrome with an ab initio. You briefed an EFATO, and bugger me, you actually get one today! You pick a UniSA footy field, make a successful landing, wipe out a wingtip and bend the prop and hoe a nice furrow in the number one cricket pitch, but you walk away.
What is to stop the university sports association or your aircraft's insurer to chase you for damages? There goes the next three years of your life in court appearances, legal fees and the rest if you are a contractor, even if you have insurance.
Try this from the Pilots (General Aviation) Award 1988:
A pilot will not be required to pay for damage or loss of aircraft or equipment used in the service nor will any lien or other claim be made by the employer upon the pilot's estate. Any claim made by any member of the public, passenger or other person upon the pilot's estate as a result of any accident or happening caused by the pilot when duly performing their nominated duty, whether efficiently or, as may be subsequently determined, negligently, will be accepted as a claim made against the employer. The employer will be solely responsible for all claims as a result of operations by or travel in their aircraft. The foregoing will not apply to a pilot who knowingly performs their nominated duty in a manner contrary to law or the employer's policy.
And for every other common problem that can occur while you are at work, whether personal, financial or otherwise, there is a clause setting out your rights and responsibilities.
You only see 'contracts' at the entry point, bottom feeding 'employers' that are putting the squeeze on inexperienced and desperate CPL's.
And if you accept one, you put yourself in the same situation as a sweat shop worker making shirts that sell for $100 and only taking $2 each piece.
It is BULLSH!T and you should not be taking it.
There ARE aviation employers that will hire you and pay you wages as an employee.
If you sign a 'contract for services' instead of entering into an employment contract, then you are a fool and you deserve all the headaches that are coming your way.
If you think you are smarter than the millions of Australians that worked under the worlds fairest industrial system for the last 100 years, then fill your boots.
Show us all the 'better' way.