bushy said:
How can low wages, poor conditions and a pilot shortage exist all at the same time?
Like several other posters to this thread, you are asking why it is that "supply and demand" hasn't seen to it that pay and conditions have become dramatically improved.
The supply and demand effects
are at work in this instance, as they are in every instance involving free enterprise, but there is a certain limit that has come into play. It is worth bearing in mind that there are limits to everything in the universe.
The limiting factor, in this case, is the amount of money that Rex can afford to pay out in the form of salary and conditions.
If aviation was as lucrative an industry as oil and gas, for example, then this particular limit may still be some way off, and good 'ol supply and demand would have seen to it that salaries and conditions are way up on what they were a few years ago (e.g $200K for turboprop captains, $150K for FOs, free motor vehicle and all manner of duty and living concessions).
But aviation is just not that lucrative.
Some would say that supply and demand has had no effect whatsoever and there is no discernible difference between the T&Cs offered today and those of a few years ago.
And this would generally be true, for it reveals another little reality that posters to this thread will find rather unpalatable:
That Rex have always paid their staff about as well as they can afford to!
In fact, this statement will be generally true for not just every other aviation employer in Australia, but virtually every other business in the world.