This is all really simple. The labor market determines the wage, regardless of safety, responsibility, or anything else that you want to pretend is relevant. Unions play a part in that labor market, and they do drive wages up from where they would otherwise be, but they aren't a panacea. Ultimately, the willingness of people to fly a jet for $20/hr is why airlines only pay $20/hr. And why are people willing to fly for $20/hr? Because they think it will get better down the road when they move up to the majors. But the problem is, those wages at the regionals are driving down wages at the majors, so pilots have created a vicious cycle that perpetually drives wages further down, making that low-paying regional job less and less worthwhile. Alaska Airlines just bragged to investors the other day that even with the brand new pilot contract that contained significant raises, their labor costs are only marginally higher than they were 10 years ago. And that's not even adjusted for inflation, so in real dollars, their costs are actually less than they were 10 years ago.
The only thing that can stop the cycle is for people to stop accepting work at such crappy wages. The new rules that require an ATP help, but only slightly. Ultimately, a path to ATP minimums will become standard for anyone getting into the industry, and they won't bat an eye at the added extreme cost of getting there. Instead of it costing $100k to get to the point of being employable, people will spend $250k to get to that point, and they'll continue to justify it by saying "it gets better later, so it's worth it."
Until the well of people willing to live like paupers for that chance of being a 767 pilots dries up, it will only get worse. There will be peaks and valleys in compensation (right now we're on the upslope), but each peak won't be as high as the previous one, and each valley will be lower than the previous one. The overall trend will continue to get worse. Sorry to be a buzz-kill, but we're doing it to ourselves.
