Like Skyhigh said, management will up and quit if they aren't getting paid what they want. A manager has so many more career options than a pilot. He has nearly limitless branches and routes available on his career path with easy transferability of job skills. Us - not so much. As pilots, we want to fly. That's it - fly. So, we dig ourselves into a rut. We cannot fathom doing anything else but flying, so we don't quit. We can't just jump ship as the system is set up to screw you by doing so; you lose your seniority, pay, etc. A manager most likely keeps at least what he has, or improves, upon getting a new job, whereas we start at the bottom again. So we become angry and bitter, and take it. Eventually, the love of flying that was used against us is gone, but by then we are usually in too deep to start a new career path.

Being a pilot is such a specialized and narrowly focused job that our career options are severely limited. It's difficult to move from a professional pilot into another professional level job - but not so for most other prof. level jobs. They are seen as having desireable skills, but to the outside world, we don't have much in the form of skills that translate into their professions. They really don't understand what we do, and they are the ones making the decisions. Loving what you do can be severely crippling in this sense. Managers are usually relatively small in number, and are seen as valuable and critical assets, whereas we are just a number in the mass of labor, skilled labor, but with a steady stream of people willing to take the job for the pay being offered.

Anyway, I rambled, but the regionals certainly CAN afford to pay us more, but until they run out of applicants, they have no reason to. To love to fly and do it for a living is a very sharp double edged sword.