A few decades ago I started working at a place where a couple of really talented people had never asked for a raise. I negotiated indirectly by talking about better opportunities and head hunters with my boss as well as asking for more pay. I got it every year. After a couple of years someone asked me what I was making and it turned out I was making a significantly amount more money than a lot of the senior staff members.
This was very nice for the budgets, but it eventually lead to everyone important to the department finding new jobs over a period of five years. When I stated it was a great place to work with really talented people, when I left it wasn’t because the talent had left and management had a really hard time convincing their managers that they needed to up the starting wages, because the budget had been just fine for so long.
This is very anecdotal of course, but underpaying technicians for years can be a very dangerous strategy under the right circumstances.