It is a very military view that all things flying are governed by pilots when in fact they are not. The FAA, CAA and EASA do not mandate that pilots do ground runs. Only operators create this rule...and, obviously, there are a great deal of operators that don't require pilots for their ground running checks.
However pilots may feel about this, they are wrong in this case...unless they can change the regulations.
Even in the military I once declared a 'D' state (AOG) to Command for the lack of a pilot for ground runs, and we remained at that state for five days before someone with a tick in the box thought to turn up! Imagine the wages and facility costs to any civvy company for that sort of shortage affecting ten-plus engineers and support staff.