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I have seen the opposite many times in my field. Someone who has been working with the company for a few years and then they hire someone in new when a similar position opens and pays them more.

At my last job we had an excellent manager, a position opened up for a manager doing something similar, they offered him a lateral move - he was thinking about taking it when he found out they were also interviewing people and offering them about 20k more for the same position (and he was more than qualified for the job). These things happened on a very regular basis there, and has been the norm in other places I have worked. AT my current job they hired in a new guy, with no experience but had his ccna, and he makes 3k more a year than I do (with 10 years exp, ccna, scna, scsa). The reasoning? They were getting rid of the pay bands and just decided to be nice and give him the top of it before the change over.

Life goes on, my self training pays off, and I am moving to a new position as a unix engineer making 12k more. Sometimes you just have to shrug off the goofiness :)

A lot of that is just negotiating capability. In looser corporate structures it's all about what the person asks for, I was notorious for selling myself cheap a bad habit since I also tend to be the first member of my department, slowly I've learned to push for more.

Paying the new hires more than the old staff is normal. In nursing the new grads will come in at one to three dollars more an hour than the seasoned staff. Sometimes nurses quit and lost their pensions in order to be rehired at the higher rate. Or quit and work per diem for an even higher rate.