There are pros and cons with the current seniority list system to be sure. But its abolishment, or worse, some lame NSL, are worse than the worst elements of the status quo. The best we can hope to do is to mitigate some of the bigger negative effects. We can do that in a number of ways, while still preserving the seniority system at each airline. Ending this mentality of "first year pay" is one key stratedgy. First year pay should be 2-3% less than second year pay, which should be 2-3% less than 3rd year pay, etc. Take any major/legacy or established LCC's (JB, AT, etc) 3rd year pay and even the perverbial senior widebody captain at a defunct airline should be able to live off that. That ties into another thing we can do, collectively, and that is to stop living beyond our means, leveraging credit, financing punk ass kid's 6 figure art history appreciation degrees so they can extend their childhood for 4 years, party and "discover themselves", the second homes, boats, etc.
If you are an airline pilot and you can't afford to pay cash for anything other than a reasonable primary home and after you pay cash for what you want, you STILL have 6-12 months pay in very liquid savings and an additional nest egg to draw from, then you CAN NOT AFFORD IT. Over-leveraging, particularly through credit, in any industry is a recipe for disaster. In this industry it guarantees disaster if anything happens to YOUR airline/list. We complain about that and some suggest the answer is to give a portability windfall to the "senior" at every airline (who are usually among the most overextended) to the direct detriment to the vast majority of every other pilot everywhere else. Never going to happen. EVER.
At contract time, we can concentrate more on pay across the baord and less on jailhouse lawyer loop holes where a tiny percentage of pilots can triple dip with impunity. There is a cost to that, and contrary to populist belief that cost isn't paid by management, it is paid by the entire pilot group across the entire pay table in all seats, all the time.
We also need some sore of a national hiring list, NOT a national seniority list. Although that hiring list can have a seniority component (i.e. must hire or at least interview...all or a certain percentage...off this list, perhaps in top down order). Military service could easily count as seniority as well as qualifying to be on that list. Each airline could still set its own requirements, like X amount of PIC or not, degree or no degree, ATP or not, and could still interview and choose who to hire, but it would have to be off the list.
So the newly laid off former senior widebody captain would still have to start over. And that would sting, no doubt. But essentially getting guaranteed interviews at all legacy/major/established LCC's first, and if hired by any one of them, going in at a livable first year pay instead of this defacto 1-2 year B scale nonsense would help immensely. If that individual had his fiscal house in order as well, it wouldn't be the career ending bankruptcy divorce causing depression inducing whopper of a start over it is today. Far from it. It would still sting, but it would be infinitely better than today's status quo, while not harming any other pilot group or individual pilot already at any particular airline.
There is no solution that is perfect to everyone all the time. And like it or not, it matters where one gets hired in this industry. There is no way around that. That is part of every pilot's decision making process, career risk management and financial lifestyle management. If your airline goes T.U., you will have to start over. There is no way around that. However we can all work together to mitigate the negatives in that while preserving the positives our seniority list system provides.