I have seen both sides of this coin and honestly, both sides are to blame. The mainline pilots should never had allowed the RJ's to be flown out of their own pilot group and the regional pilots should never had agreed and continue to fly the RJ's for crap pay and work rules. The mainline guys need to retake scope and the regional guys need to fight for a respectable contract, ie better pay and work rules! The solution to the problem is with both groups so stop blaming one another and change your mindset and try to be part of the solution. As for the CAL/UAL groups, scope is number one priority so for those of you living in the Bedford dream world that scope will continue to be relaxed allowing more and larger RJ's to be operated by regional contract carriers, forget it!
I would agree, plenty of blame to go around and each situation is different. The Majors booboo'd by giving away the first non-turbo prop aircraft. AA used to fly Folkers, everyone else had DC9's, so it could be done.
So it was done, and if it had stayed at 50 seats, that would be that, but
the regionals booboo'd by agreeing to fly 76+ RJ's for essentially no additional money so there was even more incentive for the majors to park hundreds of jets in favor of larger RJ's.
Ironically, unless both sides see the value in retaining the flying at the majors the cancer will continue to spread. Senior pilots at both levels control the MEC's. Senior pilots at the majors can be bought with a healthy payraise with the guise that giving up more bottom flying makes the company more money to pay the top end of the payscale.
Senior pilots at the regionals have sold out hope of leaving, so they lobby for bigger jets for even a pittance of a raise because they know it will mean more money, growth, security, etc.
Eventually the senior regional pilots want even more and they will try to morph into a national airline and try to go it alone, seems to be the evolution of the regionals to date, ie republic, xpress jet, ACA, Mesa, etc.