JIMC5499 said:Where do you think political contributions come from?
Unions??
Generally, an employee gets paid comenserate with what he contibutes to the company. The more productive the more pay. A guy that can operate a back hoe gets paid more money then an unskilled ditch digger with a shovel because he is more productive. There is a marginal increase in pay because of the extra responsiblity the back hoe driver must assume (avoiding power lines, buried gas lines, etc) but the real differential in pay comes from his being able to dig a hell of a lot more ditch in an hour then the guy with a shovel. It isn't much different with an airline pilot. Just do the math some day. Take the average fare a passenger is paying to fly across the pacific, multiple it by the number of seats and you can get an idea how it is A4s airline can justify his salary (well used too
) Fly a smaller airplane and get paid less per hour. Fly for a domestic "low cost" airline where the average yield per ticket sold is less then for the Boeing 777 crossing the pond and you will get paid less. All that said, times have changed. Blame who you want, but the average yield per ticket has dropped dramaticly. The profit made on a flight from LAX to ORD is less then it was in the early 90s. Although the pilots are doing the same job their contribution to the bottom line is less. Even though they work just as hard on any given flight their efforts are less productive then years before. Now throw in a few labor market forces like all those junior birdmen wanting to fly for an airline that will work for peanuts, guys on furlough looking for a job, and you see, something must give! Or rather, everyone must give, til it hurts. 
You may now go back to arguing about who should give back the most and who got us into this fine mess. I would humbly suggest it is simply a dramaticly changing market. The arguement should be who has delt the best in dealing with the new reality in the most responsive way. As a group, it is fair to say that companies in backruptcy may not have done as good a job as those that have remained out of the courts. What happened in each of those comanpies varies. Each is fighting for its own survival under different circumstances, different finances, different labor cantracts, or none at all, different capital requirements, different pension plans and funding levels, etc. That is what is ment by suggesting some of you don't know what you are talking about. If you aren't in that company and paying VERY close attention, it is hard to opine "who is at fault".