Curious, what did you propose, OP? Decrease the expectations for these facilities and accept management wont get so much? We all dream of that;) actually, the way it accidentally happened, is about the best way you could express yourself. Now you've vented without any liability (cause accident) and its all going to get better for you:) obviously they handled it well, and actually asked you for an advice on solution of this. Could have gone much worse, so actually things went really well - this day was about the most productive day in your career, otherwise you would need months/years just to break the ice. What you can do now is to suggest better solutions.

And I agree, each recession is an excuse to decrease the lowest sallaries, and every good period with profits is usually just an excuse to increase the highest sallaries. There should be laws governing these changes through time, cause this is now systemical.