I wish I had a background in economics before opening up this can of worms, but here it goes. And keep in mind this is just my spin on things.
We live in a free market, and as I understand, the market and competetion drive just about everything. Therefore, I'm going to step out on a limb, and say that I believe NOBODY in a free market society is over or under paid. Yes, we would all like more money, and we all probably think we are underpaid.
In my mind, it works like this. Management or a business owner will pay you as little as they can, up to as much as they can afford based on your added value to the company (and how much you gripe). If it makes financial sense to get rid of you, you will lose your job. In the case of automation- navigators, radio operators, and flight engineers. I believe that if ground ops could be automated and if it would save money in the long run, it would be automated. Same token with pilots except that you are dealing with the public's perception of safety and having a computer make decisions.
If a labor group demands more than the company's board thinks is financially possible, it leaves only one option for the company-to quit operating as it has been. This means bankruptcy, selling the company to someone who thinks they can do it, merging, changing strategies, B scales, bringing in scabs, whatever.
On the other hand, if you don't like what you are offered, you can work to change it, just take it (BOHICA) or quit. You quitting is taken into account by asking, "if so and so leaves, how hard will it be to replace and train that person?" The answer determines what they are willing to pay you--more for an employee that is harder to find, more expensive to train, etc. and less for people that can be brought on board quickly. I think this sheds light on the ground ops/pilot debate.
Neither group is more important, and it takes everyone to make the show run smoothly. However, if you need to replace 500 rampers vs. 500 pilots in the midst of a crisis, my guess is that it would be easier to get 500 new rampers up to speed than it would be 500 new pilots.
There was mention of this in the book "Hard Landing", but I can't seem to find it. Several contracts were up for re-negotiation, and management's thinking was, "If we can just get the pilots to sign, the airline will continue to run. It will run at reduced capacity, but if the pilots quit working, the passengers don't get anywhere." Again, I don't think anyone is more important than anyone else, just prioritized differently by how much of a pain in management's butt you are. A300 capt. said it, "You don't get what you deserve, but what you negotiate."
It's funny I find myself thinking about this issue again. If you are still reading this, and don't mind bearing with me, I'm going to tell you a story in a fashion similar to one of the examiners at the FlightSafety Academy.
I was a ski patrollman for a couple of years. (Yes, sometimes I wonder why I decided to become a pilot, but not often enough to quit) Now the patrollers in the world are fairly small in number and a tight knit group for the most part. I think the job has a lot in commom with piloting.
First, we all loved the job. It was an amazing way to spend your time, and sometimes you would giggle knowing that you were being paid to get fist tracks in 18" of new powder while the paying public waited in long lines for the lift to open. Ahhhhh....I've got that grin right now just thinking about it! We also didn't take the job home with us (most of the time). Once the day was done, you were free to live it up with your buds, or if you were lucky enough, with a lady. It was also an amzing and powerful experience to be able to throw explosives on the slopes and trigger one of nature's most awesome displays of power!
However, just like any coin, there is another side. You wonder what the hell you are doing with a college education making $8 bucks an hour. You wonder (and these were all real accidents) if anyone will have a double femur fracture, or a flap of their scalp flipped down over their face, or whether you'll have to tell a retired Air Force fighter pilot that he is now paralyzed, or quite frankly whether someone will die that day, including your co-workers. You wonder as you wake up at 4 a.m. in order to be at the hill assembling explosives before your coffe takes hold. You wonder as you stand on top of a ridge with a 40 m.p.h. wind, in a cloud, learning first had about rime icing (I'm not kidding, I could watch it accumulate on my leading a$$, I mean edge) whether or not you are going to have to do an avalanche beacon search as you can no longer see your partner in the whiteout. You wonder how a nice spring day at the top lift shack could turn into un-erraseable memories of a young snowboarder cartwheeling down 300 ft worth of cliffs and why you had to be second on scene as you watch him die. (By the way, did I mention I made $8 bucks an hour?)
We felt we were under paid. Were we? Not according to what I wrote in the beginning, but hell yes we were underpaid! Interestingly enough, a couple patrols are unionized. We figured we'd try and change things, and if it didn't work, we'd get representation. We butted heads with management. We threatened, they threatened. (It never happened because we couldn't get a unified front, but amazing in itself, we did actually get the CEO, Earl Holding, in a meeting.) Long story short, management figured if we didn't like it we could leave. We figured, they can't afford to replace us, because there aren't that many patrollers out there, and like pilots, if we didn't work (mainly avalance control), the mountain wouldn't open. Too bad we didn't factor in the important point that the whole mountain operation was, unlike airlines, a big money loser, a tax write off, and a way for a billionaire to stoke his ego.
In the end, the patrollers are still working for the same wages. Did anyone leave? Not really. Why? Because like flying, despite all of the hardships, there isn't anything like the comraderie, or a sunrise from altitude. If the market demanded, we would have been paid more. If Earl could have gotten away with it, I guarantee you we would have been paid less. Same goes with any job.
My advice, make sure you enjoy what you do, otherwise you are underpaid.