But how would you measure ability? In the majority of businesses you are paid more for finding the more creative ways you can come up with to solve problems.We are paid to follow the flows of the checklists. While experience makes a difference among pilots, you can't simply say, "He seems like a good pilot, he deserves a raise". While seniority within a company may not make sense other than to promote loyalty, a seniority based system based on TT is probably the way forward, but then the issue arises of companies not employing the more experienced pilots as they would be more expensive than 200hr types.
Just my €0.02