Some very good posts gentlemen....
Cxorcist, you are absolutely right when you said "If anything, A scalers let down B scalers and themselves by allowing the introduction of a separate payscale in '94. It has been all downhill from then."
I'm living proof of that. As an A scaler I now understand that we should have done something more back in 93. How successful we would have been is pure conjecture. We were facing a management that put a gun to our heads and was spoiling for a fight...we finally stood up to them in 99...shortly after which they fired 49 of our friends and colleagues.
My hope today is that market forces; and legislative IATA/ICAO/CAD initiatives to not allow low time, heavily indebted and indentured 200hr cadet pilots on salaries substantially lower than current FO rates (as Gligg stated) force them to rethink their hiring policy . Safety is their number one concern after all......