With regards to trade unions, it was always the intention of the EU to make sure there would be no intra European ones. It does make it almost impossible to fight a company like Wizz air outside countries with strong legislation and unions.
And the steppingstone comment is, as mentioned by others, flawed. You could’ve argued there might be a way to Ezy or other real jobs before COVID and yes quite a lot of good Wizz air pilots did go that way. Now that route is completely closed for the foreseeable future and as Wizz competes on the same routes they are in effect destroying the next step up by accepting T&Cs that are at best half as good as other companies.
Fact is good conditions are disappearing and the direct reason for this is pilots accepting jobs on inferior T&Cs. I am fully aware though that some pilots feel there’s no choice as they’ve already invested everything to get to paid job in a jet. It’s not straight forward sadly.
What should be a straight forward choice is for young people to NOT sink their money and future into this business and ending up working for peanuts in Wizz air in few years having started training after COVID. It will get absolutely zero sympathy from anyone.