It's right to medically protect the embryo from radiation and such in the earliest phases. However women pilots must be guaranteed to not lose their jobs in case of pregancy. I thought they were but reality seems to be different.

I´m with you on that, BUT being self employed has certain advantages and dis-advantages. Can´t have your cake and eat it too. For regular contracts I guess we are there. I don´t see the big difference between a dude, say, breaking a leg and thus being terminated on medical grounds as a contractor and a pregnant woman who is unfit to fly on medical grounds.

I understand that you don't get full flight pay when working on ground jobs only for some time but getting fired for not terminating your pregnancy is beyound brutal. There must be another way to treat people fair.

Contract pilots. Not employed, contracted. Employees might be re-tasked to another role. Contractors not likely. Unless to another contract ie cleaning. Its not "fired" as such.

Many contractors are on an as required basis, only called in for a specific task. So not like a regular job that one turns up to every day. And if one is "unavailable" for any reason, well the phone will probably go quiet.

Given the "pilot shortage" (cough) it is surprising there are any contract pilots at all. As operators surely would want to employ in order to keep hold of their crews, given the "pilot shortage" (cough).

Fair has 2 sides when one is hired under a contract. You have the right to be paid and your employer has the right to your labour under the terms of the contract. It has nothing to do with the sex of the individual signing the contract but rather solely with the provision of labour under the terms of the contract.

Right, but 'self-employed' people who are constrained by contract to working for a single 'client' [employer] at that employer's effective beck & call aren't actually contractors at all, they are disguised employees. Having a pool of contractors you use on an ad-hoc basis for surge capacity & to cover full time staff out sick etc is one one thing, but of course unless they are also allowed to go and 'do a bit' for the competition when not required by you, that's a zero hours contract. Which again is a source of concern to people trying to enforce employment law.

You make it sound like they were conscripted. I imagine they entered their association / contract with eyes open. We keep hearing about a "pilot" shortage so they must have had reasonable alternates.

Don't blame the Irish Government only. It was the contract pilots own choice to take the contract. They knew what they were doing, or they should have.

As others have noted, it depends on what the contract says. When I was working, we often had a significant number of 'contract' engineers. Boeing liked contract engineers because they were easy to hire or let go, and so they could respond to variations in workload without adversely affecting the core workforce. Some of the really good contract engineers were made offers and became direct employees - many others we were just as happy to seen gone when they left.
One of the terms of the contracts was that either side could terminate, at any time and without cause, with 2 weeks notice (no notice required if the termination was 'for cause' - e.g. theft).
About 20 years ago, our division chief came out of meeting where he'd been told he needed to cut costs and announced all contract employees in the division were given their 2 week notice, effective immediately (at the time, roughly 10% of the engineers in the division were contract). Given the circumstances, coordination and transfer of tasks from the contract engineers was all but none existent - in fact many simply stopped coming in. Although the reaction of direct employees was near panic, it turned out that by most metrics (e.g. on time completion of tasks) things actually got better after the contractors were let go.

If the pilots contracts are similar with provisions that either party can terminate without cause - and a pregnant pilot can't fly - then it's perfectly reasonable for the employer to say 'if you can't fly, you're terminated'. Sure, it sounds bad, but if you're under contract to do a job, and you're no longer able to perform that job, then most people are going to be be let go.

Unfortunately the headline is quite far from reality in some cases. I have met some of these pilots who had been offered permanent employment within some airlines but refused as there is quite a significant gain in income if operating as a contractor, less tax etc. I also know of pilots who were full time employees and moved to self employed contracts.

Unfortunately in most contract jobs there are clauses saying that if you can no longer offer flying services then the contract can/will be terminated, for those female pilots this would be the case during pregnancy due to temporary loss of medical.

This has the potential to ruin contracting for those of us who want it. The freedoms in contracting are beneficial to some of us. Unfortunately again a group of people might ruin this for the pilots who genuinely want and need contract jobs. I have no sympathy for those pilots who choose to work as contractors and then complain about lack of rights.

Selfish a little?

Selfish would be those who sign a contract and then because of their sex or other personal considerations believe that they are somehow exempt from the terms of their contract.

Evan Cullen is being a bit disengenuous by playing the gender card which he knows plays well with the media and politicians particularly of the leftish variety. But the reality is the same with any self employed contractor pilot. If you you're not fit for work you don't get paid whether it be a sprained wrist, a broken leg, flu or a flare up of your gout. Not just pilots but anyone who works for themselves.
So the discussion is exactly how to define self employment and that's not just a matter for aviation but across a lot of business sectors. Not just in Ireland either.

This is a much bigger issue than maternity leave for a small handful of women.

The UK already has such provision, at least from a taxation point of view. It is called IR35 and severely limits your ability to avoid tax if you claim to be self-employed but have only one "client".

IR35 also has this interesting point...

https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/kno...self-employed/

In other words if you have to turn up to do the work yourself they may consider you are employed. If you can send someone else you might be self employed. Problem if you need someone's unique skill set.