Exactly. There is no pilot shortage for airlines that can afford to pay market salaries for their pilots, and indeed the rest of their staff.
If you are basing your business model on paying below award, or below market salaries then you must either change your business model or get out of the industry. Leave it to the guys who through either smarter business sense or better political connections can get the revenue they need to pay their staff a living wage.
Some airlines need to go bust to re-establish the wage structure. So be it, there are far too many around anyway. With fewer airlines and more passengers every year, the yield will go up and the remaining airlines will be more profitable.
It's industrial Darwinism, and high time it happened in the airline industry.
Grizzle mode off<