Scott,
You have a talent for stepping in it. But I'll agree with you. I used to hold a national license in race control with a specialty in grid. I say used to, because I had to let it lapse this year, because I couldn't work enough races and race, too, to keep it active. On double national weekends, I still work grid...out of my pocket. My reward comes in the form of a couple of semi decent meals and maybe some goodies. That is, of course, aside from the fact that I love working the race. If it's a R/N weekend, I still work grid on Sunday.
I have several friends that do the same, whether on corners, grid, tech, etc. Trouble is, I know of only one National driver that works regionals. One out of how many thousand. I'm sure there are others, but, as a rule they just don't.
I've got no suggestions for how to change that attitude of arrogance. I can only feel that it is propogated from the national office.
One of our worker problems comes from over subscribed workers. To my knowledge, the SCCA is the only organization that trains corner workers. (Outside of the Pro Organizations). When you take a specific number of tracks, mutiplied by a large number of race weekends, and set to the power of huge number of sanctioning organizations, then divide it by a limited number of race workers, something has to give.
If drivers helped by working at least one day out of a weekend, the load would be spread over a much larger base.