Was there a reason you chose unskilled labor as a comparison? Doctors, lawyers, arquitects and other 'professions' require a lot of investment and sacrifice to reap the reward at the end. You also left out trades like plumbers, carpenters, electricians, try undercutting one of those groups the next time you need a project done around the house.

Does it take a car salesman, waiter, cook, 5-10 years of intense study and preparation, while struggling financially, afraid for their life? Starving medical interns and pilots accept the tough years so that one day we can live the life we struggled so much to achieve. Risk/reward, something the communists never fully understood. Few would put up with all that, knowing the final reward was some nebulous (cheap) figure negotiated downwards by pitting pilot against pilot. That is management's wet dream and why they hate collective bargaining. CEOs aren't concerned with the long term devastation and dismantling of the profession when their golden parachute is only a fiscal quarter away.