...of course in order to plug most things into those sockets, you need to jam a screwdriver into the ground, thus teaching kids it's okay to do so. Combine this with 240 volts, instead of a God Fearing, Amurrican-flag wavin' 110, and you've got a lot of fried kids on your hands. Fortunately, you have top-notch state medical care for them.
Oh yeah, the topic.
Sure, it happens all the time in the US, just not necessarily for pilots and aircraft (after all, if it is economically advantageous to use US crews and equipment, why would a US company hire Europeans one) -- maintenance, for example, can be economically farmed out to less wealthier countries (wasn't someone bitching about Jetblue just the other day?)
One of the central principles of the EU seems to be breaking down "barriers to commerce" within the 25 states and without. Either way, it effectively means giving the owners/shareholders access to cheaper sources of skilled and unskilled labor, and equalizing the currently rather disparate conditions among such labor. Another EU principle seems to be soaking up money to pay for another layer of bureaucracy in Brussels.
Oh yeah, another advantage of having US employees in your overseas cargo company is taxes: if they work overseas, and on paper they stay overseas for 330 of the 365 days in the year, they can exclude their first $80,000 USD of income from taxes in the US, regardless of whether they are residents of that overseas country. Combine that with a highly mobile workforce, whose location and payment (in the US by a US company) is hard to trace, and the possibilities abound for increasing one's take-home pay by ignoring bothersome in-country taxes and work requirements: The company's overhead per employee drops, and the employee's take-home pay is more competitive than the salary figures would suggest. Does this happen? Of course not, never.
[/talking out of apu -- just wanted to say something inflammatory to justify the off-topic remark about power sockets]