Offered unpaid leave, really!!! offered makes it sound like they have a choice?
For the contractor's you can stay where you like, but no flying means no money
Its been said elsewhere but they have more aircraft than they can profitably fly apart from a few months of the year, so it makes sense to park them and opening new bases allows them to do just that very cheaply.
As for the headline's Ryanair creates 1000 new jobs because they have moved an aircraft to Leeds perhaps if the headline was Ryanair cuts a 1000 jobs might be more apt, thankfully because they never create that many jobs they cant loose that many either!