Welcome to the country! Everyone pays new hire more than current pilots  

just because you've been someplace longer, your pay should be higher than a new hire that may have as much or more experience than you do. That's really how it works in the rest of the world: employers pay for experience. There's a 10K gap between step 1 and 4 at AMC. If your at step two with 2 years ems and they bring in somebody with more experience than you, they're going to get step 4 and and an experience bonus to boot. Tough sh*t. They deserve it and quit crying about.

BTW, the 10 year rate at AMC is $118,000.  New hires, experienced or not, are not starting out anywhere close to that. 

I worked for a crappy company that didn't give much for raises and they got short on pilots. They had to increase pay to get anybody to apply. New hires with no experience were getting what 5 year or more pilots were getting. That was wrong. You're always better off union. ALWAYS.