The two culprits in your plight are
a) the airlines for providing such degrading conditions.
b) wannabes (primarily) for accepting them.
CamelhAir, agree, but you missed an important one:
c) the schools like OAT and CTC who not only peddle an unrealistic and overpriced dream KNOWING that the market cannot currently support the supply of pilots they churn out, AND THEN seek to justify schemes like flexicrew as a way of at least getting those poor unfortunate pilots flying after they've stumped up all that cash.
Merry Christmas all, and I hope that all those seeking jobs or sweating on keeping them get the best present of all very soon indeed.
oap