I agree Blacksheep - in fact you seem to have more or less summarised my letter to the boss about an annual payrise.
As a profession we don't help ourselves by and large - we allow too many unqualified people to take engineering management posts and are far from unified. We also don't provide many training opportunities for new people coming into the profession.
I have a personal hope that the current mass employment exercise by BAE / Airbus for the 777 development might well drive salaries up considerably in my sector of the industry, although I doubt it'll have quite the same benign effect upon maintenance salaries.
Incidentally, the RAeS have done one very useful thing recently - they've bowed to pressure and re-opened the members bar at Hamilton Place.
G