Those that were hiring paid peanuts for inexperienced pilots - ask anyone who worked for CityFlyer Express about the poverty wages on offer and they will no doubt tell you how bad it was
What? They may not have paid very well... but they did pay you, not vice versa.
And its one thing to be
paid peanuts for flying for an startup outfit with a handful of turboprops, its another thing entirely to be pay
ing 10's of thousands for the privilege of working for a major jet operator for a few months.
A lot of the CFE folks did a year or two on peanuts and then moved on to jet operators. Or stayed put and got commands, and pretty soon jet commands within CFE. In otherwords there was a career path available. Now, even if you could find a job with a small outfit, you'd be stuck there because the path further up the totem pole is blocked by people paying to occupy RHS Jets.
What is currently happening is not far removed from the status in the early 1990s.
Its vastly different!