Great analogy Norman!
Unfortunately it's a completely outdated and flawed one.
Pilots are no trauma/brain surgeons, where
minute to minute decisions or actions (cuts of a scalpel) have life threatening consequences. Sure, sometimes it
can get hectic in the cockpit, but most of the time we spend our flights monitoring the auto pilot, doing a fuel check, doing a briefing, talking about cars or checking out page 3 of The Sun. Aviation safety has improved enormously since the days of piston engines, old analogue cockpits etc, basically the days when sex was safe and flying was dangerous.
Those were perhaps the days when the trauma surgeon vs pilot analogy would fly, but not anymore.
Try to think of us as errrrrrr coach (traditional airline) drivers, or bus (low cost) drivers, or lorry (freight pilot) drivers or perhaps limo (NetJets etc) drivers. These drivers will drive for hours on end with relatively low work load, yet at certain times a quick (potentially life saving!) reaction might be needed. They can cruise relaxed on empty highways, but need to be focused in busy cities (TMA!) with lot's of pedestrians, cyclists and other cars. Here a lorry driver might have to avoid a group of school children, or a bus driver narrowly has to avoid a collision with a drunk driver who jumped a red light and thus saving his passengers from possible death and injury.
Sure, if a pilot makes the wrong decision then people could die, but if a driver makes the wrong decision (or jerks the steering wheel in the wrong direction) people also die.
So do drivers get paid the same as pilots or the same as trauma surgeons? Answer: nope! Remember that being a truck driver was once considered a good job, now they get paid peanuts in order to keep up with the (Eastern European) competition. Hint: do you see similarities....?
Whether you agree or not, but management sees us as button pushing, system monitoring bus drivers and they are pushing hard for a commensurate pay check. It's all about supply, demand, and the backbone of a workforce to fight for a good deal. Fighting for a good deal should be done during economic good time, so now we are solely at the mercy of supply and demand. Does this perhaps partly explain the downward pressure on our T&C's?
I hope the grass is greener outside for you but I fear not. There are a load of people who have left easyJet in the last couple of years who have actively tried to return but have not been able to do so.
Trust me the grass
is greener! Perhaps you get only part of the picture as you hear (orange Pravda-mail propaganda!) about the relatively few people who try to return to EZY. What you don't see are the loads of people who left EZY to join a normal airline and have seen their lives improve by 200%! Not being able to return you say? The trick in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn. Remember, trying to keep people
in, either by manipulation, threats and half truths (propaganda) has never worked in the long run. Go and look at what's left of the Berlin Wall next time you're in SXF Norman!