Ten,
Your version of history is not quite right.
Back in the day, we had airline jobs, period. Some airlines like Pan Am were big and international, some airlines like Delta, Northeast, Ransome and Southern were small and regional.
By the time the RJ's came along in 1996, there were already DC9's, BAE146's, 737's, F27's and Dash 7's. Some regional airlines, like ASA, flew their own code and also code-shared with Delta t increase Delta's feed, just as Alaska does today. Comair was a bit of a new model, since it was developed by Delta and operated under Delta's direction.
In the day these carriers would have been treated like Ramsome, Southern, Northeast, etc... In those days the capacity of the DC-3, Convairs and the like were not that distant a memory. The memories of men like EL Cord who used alter ego to bust pilot labor unions was familiar too. Our union understood whipsaw and the risks of letting the Company have a choice of pilot labor.
You do place the blame in the right general direction. It was ALPA, specifically our mainline MEC's who brought forward the changes needed to facilitate and transfer the wealth to us, a preferred class of pilots who would enjoy the fruits of superior representation.
Morally, I believe it is wrong that we, as a union, provide a different outcome to pilots based on the number of seats on their airplanes. If Pinnacle had one more seat on one airplane, they'd be afforded the benefits of ALPA's merger policy. But since they have only 76 seats, they are suckered into concessionary contracts for survival.
Your conclusions are probably right. It seemed some here might benefit from the history lesson. DCI in it's current form remains inefficient, a lousy place to work and far from our best efforts to serve our customers. We should continue our efforts to see that only Delta pilots perform Delta flying.