Oh, I doubt that ALI would put any 500-hour pilots in as light ship PICs. Most certainly they are being hired into SIC slots...let me add...AS SHOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPENING ALL ALONG. The problem has always been the skewed and IMHO erroneous thinking that 212's and 412's and the like required two highly-experienced IFR captains. Yeah, it's cool to offer the customes such a "benefit" but it absolutely has a bad effect on the ability of new pilots to come into this industry and build flight time.
As for the comment about the "other operator down there," let me tell a short story. Back in 1995, it was announced to all the pilots of all the companies in the town where I was working (Venice, Louisiana) that a union rep would be in town to answer our questions. Pilots from PHI, Air Logistics and Era showed up.
PHI and ALI management simply did not take this renewed interest in forming a union seriously. After all, it had been tried before. All the operators had to do in the past was throw a little money at the pilots and the problem would go away. Unfortunately, they miscalculated this time.
However, Era took the union threat seriously. They made some substantive improvements to their pilots' pay, along with sincere-sounding promises of better things to come. We never saw the Era pilots at any more union meetings.
What's different today? Well, it sure is a new era in the GOM...