It's not just about the money. Money is in line with the rest of the issues plaguing this job. Money is just the easiest, most tangible, identifiable symptom of a broader malaise. My thesis is this: if there was a way to graph other QoL (home and work) indicators, they would roughly correlate.
We are paid substantially less than we were roughly twenty years ago, in two specific categories:
1) Flight pay
2) ACP
Both of those pays have remained stagnant to inflation for over two decades. $1k / $35k doesn't nearly cover the spread. If those two pays were at least adjusted for inflation, the remaining issues would at least change in perspective. But until that happens, we are essentially negotiating low cost items. Pushing sleeves up? Ancillary duties? Fewer/clickable CBTs? These are just low/no cost gimmes.