You poms are being too polite
Most airlines treat their cabin crew like ****. As Piltdown Man said, it takes around 5-6 weeks to train a Flight Attendant from scratch.
Many airlines consider them to be temporary employees, by which I mean they hire them young and work them to death. They leave a few years later. But that's no problem because they'll just recruit some more "young-uns" and repeat the cycle.
Pilots are (generally) better treated, but only because it takes so much longer (and much more money) to train them.
In the U.S. many of the regional pilots are so badly paid that they qualified for welfare. It took the Colgan Q400 crash (look it up) to prompt the Americans that something was wrong with their system.
I can't speak for Europe, but it appears (from here in Oz) that P2F schemes are getting more and more common. So if you want to pay for your (integrated) flying course, PLUS pay an airline for 500 hours RHS in a 737 or A320, then fill your boots.
If you get into one of the big legacy carriers, different story, and good luck with that.
Here in Oz, if you work for the majors you get paid pretty well. Some airlines make you work pretty hard for it; others not so much. But the majors haven't done that much hiring since the GFC. If you're in one of the big regionals you get paid okay (but not that well) but get flogged.
What do the CEO's have to do with it?
Everything.