I don't know what airline you work for but what you state has not been my experience at an airline. I headed up the training program at a regional prior to my current job and I can assure you that pilot skills were as if not more important than running the automation. Even when I went through 747-400 school flying the airplane is foremost with automation secondary. You can always turn off the magic if you ned to and just fly the bird.

I do think that what has changed in the past 20 years is the experience level of a lot of the newhire regional pilots. When I was at that stage of the game nobody would even look at you if you didn't have 2500TT/500ME. To upgrade was a minimum of 3500TT with 1000ME turbine. This was flying straight wing non autopilot beech's, metro's, etc. It used to be that if a low experience pilot was hired he/she gained experience hand flying many takeoffs, landings, and low approaches prior to even get the chance to fly an aircraft with a lousy autopilot. With todays RJ aircraft and all of its automation pilot skills that were once aquired prior to entering the regional or at least flying for a regional in a slow forgiving aircraft is gone.....