Dedication? How about supply and demand?
Keith Pleas blogged about the plight of UAL pilots, given the trouble that the industry is in:
Anyway, everyone's blaming it on the overpaid pilots, right? Well...the guy I was sitting next to had worked his way up to captain on a 737 and was making $182K about 3 years ago. Then they stared cutting flights and laying off pilots, which pushed everybody back down the chain. So this same guy is now a first officer on that same small plane and is making around $75K. He's got a couple of thousand people below him before he's pushed off the bottom of the stack. But he (actually, his union) has agreed to a 29% pay cut (now he's at $53K) plus he has to fly 94 (I think) hours a month, up from 84 but under the FAA maximum of 100.
Now I know people are bitching about the state of our industry, but a 71% pay cut while working 10% more? That, my friends, is dedication.
No, I'd be more willing to bet that it's lack of other marketable skills (or at least any that would immediately earn more than $53K a year). One has to wonder how many years this pilot was making nearly $200K, and what his average salary was over the last several years, even with the salary cuts. I think it would still end up being high enough to make the average American (much less those in other countries) envious. For reference, the median income for 2001 in the US according to the US Census Bureau was $42,228.
The reality is that there are less people flying, so there's less demand for pilots. That puts the airlines in a much better position to negotiate (i.e. - take a pay cut, or we go under and you don't have a job) than in the past. The unions took full advantage when they had the power to demand high salaries. Now the tables are turned, and it's the airlines taking advantage. Whether that will be enough for them to survive is another question entirely.