This is rife in the industry, and it is hardly fair to single out the pilots, when they often have little control over these contracts.
One of the worst I saw was a contract from a Belgian company. The contract was with an agent in the UK, and they paid your social taxes. And they were doing so wrongly. But the UK registered contract (which was incongruously in a foreign language), stated that if the angent was caught by the authorities, the pilot had to:
a. Take all the blame.
b. Swear in court that the agent was in the right.
c. Pay all the fines.
d. Pay all the legal fees of the agent.
e. Pay all the legal fees of the airline.
Yes, that is what the contract said. Our induction course was divided - half signed and half walked away. But it is difficult to walk away, when you have a wife and kid to feed, and these agents know this. The response from the agent was: "well, we have a nice contract for you in Nigeria or Congo, if you don't want Brussels...". They also threatened to sue me for breach of contract in walking away, because they thought I had signed - but I had not, I has simply put an 'X' on the contract and sent it back.
And I might add that the contract had no pension, health benefits, holiday entitlement, union representation or employment security. And a third of the salary was paid by cheque from Morocco (in addition to the other tax-evading shenanigans). Such is the state of aviation.
Silver