There are many reasons why pilots are, "such idiots," as you put it. First & foremost we need to look at ourselves & take the majority of the responsibility. A pilot's job is still perceived as glamorous by many people outside of the aviation business (even though the glamour left sometime in the late eighties, early nineties, never to return) & therefore there is a constant flow of young people who want to get into it, still. Therefore supply outstrips demand & in basic economic terms drives down our worth.
Secondly the pathetic union activity which perpetuates a ridiculous seniority system whereby an experienced person virtually always starts in a new company at the foot of the table (& always does if that company is unionized). How the hell can this be right? Friends of mine who are solicitors, doctors, engineers, accountants etc., cannot believe that we tolerate such bull****, but, of course, we do.
The only crew who benefit from this are those on the top 10% of the lists but I suppose that's some compensation for being fat & bald
As for pilots standing together: forget it. Do you remember Cathay about nine years ago? When those 50 or so guys stood up for what they believed in & tried to safeguard one of the few remaining places 'to be' in aviation most of their so called friends & colleagues took one step back & let them hang; now look at the shambles of Cathay today! They admitted in 2007 that they couldn't even fill in the recruitment/selection dates because we all know how low they have sunk. So where do we go?
In my case I was working for the biggest pirate of them all, flying low cost around Europe. Before that I worked for Jet2: the nastiest, & lowest T&Cs bashing company in the UK right now, at times they can make O'Leary look like Mother Teresa. Before that I was flying holiday makers down to Greece for peanuts but that was better than the turbo prop jobs I'd had prior. Where was I going to go? BA or Virgin with their above mentioned stupid union driven seniority lists, whereby Little Nigel who started with them before me but has only limited experience gets the best of everything: trip requests, vacation, promotion prospects, salary? Not a chance.
By far the best choice in my circumstances was to become a contractor. It gives me a lifestyle that most of my compatriots living & working in the UK on permanent contracts can only dream of with more cash in hand, more time off & I get a shot at a command in a very reasonable space of time. In short it changes my circumstances from having a dead-end job to having a career.
On the down side, Mick Jagger, I agree with you that the salaries have remained static for a long time now, in real terms, but where haven't they? It's not just a phenomenon of the contracting world; if you look at the equivalent salaries of all pilots compared to 20 years ago we've all been going down, so I fail to see why you save such angst for the agencies? As for pilots all standing together to be counted; well there's more chance of an amoeba growing a backbone!
