...but the question is, what is the option?
Well, treat it like any technical problem in the aircraft!
1) The first and most important thing to do is to
correctly identify the problem! It never seizes to amaze me of how people that are trained and selected for things like situational awareness, problem solving and forward planning can have their collective heads stuck so deep into the sand or believe in fairy tales that somehow and magically 'it will alright and the problem will go away by itself.' Well, it won't be alright, just like an engine fire will most probably not extinguish itself either.
T&C's in the aviation industry have been declining since the 1990's and people just don't want to see it. Everybody readily accepts that the '5 days party layover at great exotic destinations' is a thing of the past, but nobody wants to project that trend vector of the last 10-20 years forward! The newly proposed EASA FTL's, quicker and quicker turn arounds, more block hours, longer duty days etc etc. Sooner or later the edges of that envelope will be reached and then the next logical step to maintain profitability is to decrease wages and T&C's. Especially in the low cost arena you already see both things happen simultaneously.
The real problem IMHO is the permanent oversupply of pilots, this is the giant fulcrum that management is using to continuously lower T&C's. Tons of naive kids get suckered into the industry every year by all kinds of rosy stories about a massive amount of retiring pilots or massive expansion in the Far East, when the truth is far less dramatic. Yes, pilots retire, and the Far East expands, but far less than flight schools are cranking out pilots. The excess and unemployed pilots are with their backs against the wall making them a probe weapon in the quest for higher management bonuses and lower T&C's for the employees.
Just like any supply/demand situation, an oversupply means that the price of pilots (i.e. wages, T&C's) go down. The oversupply MUST stop, simple!
2) Low cost CRM. Just like the lack of situational awareness when it comes to T&C's amazes me, I'm equally amazed by the total lack of CRM when it comes to defending those very same T&C's. Everybody is brainwashed in how to challenge a colleague that shows up for duty smelling like alcohol or a colleague that is not stable at 500', but nobody is challenging colleagues that are advocating the destruction of T&C's.
People need to stop sheepishly accepting all the fairy tales that some agents of misinformation are posting here, and they need to actively start challenging them more and more about the failed promises and nonsense that these management proxies post!
There are too many "senior (training) captains" in the low cost industry that don't seem to give a damn about what happens to the young entrants into the industry in the naive illusion that those very same new entrants will not be used as a fulcrum against them. So long as they themselves can continue fat dumb and happy on their exclusive contract with share options for just a few more years until retirement, they simply won't care. Obviously to them CRM is only applicable in the sim, or between on and off duty, because when it comes to T&C's they'll happily stick a knife in the backs of the B, C, D, E, Z scale colleagues and even give it a nice little twist..
IMHO there's quite a big distinction between low cost airlines and the more established carriers, where in the later, unions are stronger, people stick much more together and as such, contracts are better and equal for everybody. This of course is a double whammy because this makes it even harder for main line carriers to compete with low cost airlines, dragging the overall industry even lower because eventually these airlines will have to renegotiate lower contracts.
So there you have my opinion for what it's worth: 1) look at the big picture and try to control the enormous oversupply of pilots and 2) grow a spine, be assertive and stick together to solve any problem!
