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With regards to sickness, if the company decided to bring in a decent hourly rate and scrapped the measly trip pays then you'd soon find crew pitching up for work on a Summer's weekend day, or the Wimbledon finals, or Brighton/London Pride!!
When the flight crew are earning something in the region of £300 for an Lax with their hourly rate (posted on here previously by a pilot) then they only earn their super salaries by actually flying. You don't see too many of them going sick for an Lax on a Saturday morning do you?
If the company brought in something like this for cabin crew, sickness would fall through the floor.