You say that as if sub-par wages and work rules is something new. It isn't. It's as old as the airline industry itself. The only segments that have ever been lucrative for pilots are the Major airlines and some corporate outfits. Every other segment has always paid near-poverty wages and has treated its pilots with disrespect. "Hey, if YOU don't fly that trip in that airplane, we'll get someone who will" was the most common sentence uttered in the lower rungs of professional aviation. And they were right. If you didn't, somebody else would. It was always that way.

Believe it or not, things are beginning to change. Every airline that is not a Major is having extreme difficulty finding qualified applicants (those with ATP minimums) because there simply aren't that many out there any more who don't already work for the Majors, Regionals, or Corporate operations. The well truly is drying up.

The supply line of new pilots out of flight schools into this business has been withering for years now. New-student starts are just a fraction of what they were when I was a student pilot in the early 80's. This, combined with the Major airlines finally beginning to lose thousands of pilots over the next few years through mandatory retirements will cause the Regional industry to begin to lose thousands of their own to the Majors, with only a fraction of those leaving able to be replaced by incoming new hires, who simply are just not there in any real numbers any more.