With all due respect bia botal, and I don't disagree that you guys deserve a pay rise and I wish you all the very best with getting one ...
... but if you seriously believe that a good young turboprop captain, with a few years command time in a Dash-8 or ATR-72, who's been trained by a top shelf first world operator like Qantaslink or Wideroe or Flybe or Air New Zealand, is somehow not a "quality candidate", or is going to require standards to be lowered in order to occupy the right seat of an EK jet, then you sir are completely full of
.
I'd argue that hiring those kind of guys, will probably turn out to be a very good thing for the overall airline operating standard, as long they pick them correctly. It's a smart and long overdue move by the airline.