Absolutely no question about that. The operators of regional airlines are known and well documented scumbags. I flew for Hulas Kanodia's Flying Circus for 4 years so I've seen it in action.

I stumbled on this subject of pilot shortage about a year ago while looking at forecast age 65 retirements. The numbers are staggering in my opinion. Add to that the ATP rule, new flight and duty regs, rising costs of learning to fly (costs exceeding inflation by 1.1% since 1990 according one study), declining QOL and lack of interest in being an airline pilot.

The only thing we can conclude for sure is the balloon is about to get squeezed hard. Changes will occur. Whether they will be in favor of labor in general is yet to be seen. Of course that is what we would all love to see.