Depending on which country and which airline the duties of a dispatcher involve flight planning, load sheets, take off speeds, met reports and a lot of running around making sure everything is happening as it's supposed to. It's a high pressure job needing good people skills.
Dispatchers are onboard dealing with the flight crew prior to departure and may get to deal with difficult passengers who are being off loaded.
Most airlines would be using computerised flight planning so you are unlikely to see a dispatcher with an enroute chart and wizz wheel.
The man on the ground may need to actually be there, office staff may not.
Had to take the bait. What are competitive wages? What standard of living would we have with 'competitive' wages.
In a free market supply and demand rule.
Qualified, skilled people who are in short supply command high wages. The licenced engineer signing out an aircraft which he has just changed the engine on is difficult and expensive to replace therefore he is well renumerated to encourage him to stay. If he takes his skills abroad he can expect good rewards.
Unqualified, unskilled and semi skilled people are rarely in short supply and don't have to be well paid as they can easily be replaced, unless the unions have a strangle hold on the company. In this case a baggage loader gets paid far more than he is worth considering his qualifications, time to train and nature of the work he performs. Should he seek work abroad eg Asia or the Middle East his pay will be a small fraction of what he would get in Australia. Similarly if he looked for a non union job at home with the skill requirement of loading bags his pay would also be much lower.
While said worker is quite happy to take the extra money he also looks for the lowest price when out shopping and has no qualms about driving a Korean car, wearing clothes from Fiji and using household goods which were made in China.
Now will someone explain how Australian companies have to pay certain people more than they are worth and still compete with foreign companies which don't ?