Sounds like tough pay and working conditions to me.
But have to say, I don’t have any solutions. Clearly better pay will help, but then who pays? Raise airfares and thus cut the customer base??
It’s easy to say about any job field, that certain people should be paid more. But it’s much harder to say where the money will come from to pay someone more for the job.
We have baggage handlers at airports making more than some pilots.
When the pilots have gone on strike, they were abandoned by organized labor. There was a strike in the 1990s, and both a Clinton appointee and an organized labor boss told the pilots they were "not part of our people." There is a certainly jealousy, and a wide class distinction whereby the highly educated and trained pilot workforce is essentially "white collar" and not "blue" - even though they are highly, highly unionized.
From your lips to gawd’s ear. . .perhaps with increased fares then all the unwashed, entitled, spoiled, pajama-wearing-pillow-carrying, loud toads (not counting children) that fly once a year to see Aunt Agnus would take a bus (or drive).