Floater NW, they are not directly employ at present.
Your point about long term sickness or leave relief is not so much of a problem as it may appear. If you have enough freelancers on the books and agreements with other contractors for mutual aid and a couple of employed floaters (I like that expression due to the Peter Kay advert), there should be no problems. In fact what do the bigger outfits do when pilots are short (in supply)? They hire them in.
Regain is right in what he says, Mil Pilots, with the required experience, are not in plentiful supply anymore. They are being offered employment in the mil to 55 in a lot of cases and are being paid bonuses to stay (£100,000 has been mentioned) and they are paid more than £53k. Yes they have the Afghan, Iraq etc merry-go-round (not so merry I know) but it is still a package that a lot are staying in for. Those that are getting out are not the high hours pilots they used to be and internal security is not what it used to be so the experience is not as it was.
All I am saying is that we should be rewarded for the skills we bring to the job. Simple philosophy really.