Oh the vexed issue of pay. No one ever gets enough, not even the MD's on £100.000+. If you think pay is bad in the airline sector then try general aviation. 10 years ago when I came out of the RAF, I had an interview with Octavia in Staverton. They were offering £6000 per year, and no I did not take the job. CSE, who I did work for for a short while were not much better, paying £8000, and I believe thay are not much better even now. So I made the move to airline mainenance. It is my view that eventually a lot heavy maintenance will go to the former Eastern Bloc countries where wages are considerably lower than that in the UK, with, no doubt, a considerable drop in standards. After all we are supposed to be one Euroupe now, so the likes of Poland etc. could in theory gain JAR 145 approvals.
By the way, there are more poeple employed in our IT department than on the hangar floor! And they get better pay than us! So I suppose we could all retrain to become IT specialists. After all 'Any one can do that job'.