One of the most criticized aspects of the current publishing scheme, is that academics do pretty much all the work for free and publishers get the money.
Why don't people just charge a fee when contacted by a publisher to referee an article?
I know why do academics write peer reviews?, that's not the question. The issue is why do it requesting no monetary compensation when the publisher is getting (for doing next to nothing) an extraordinary monetary compensation.
Answer
Academics aren't upset about not getting paid for refereeing/reviewing - they're upset because journals charge too much.
There's really four points in the statement "academics do pretty much all the work for free and publishers get the money"
- Academics do most of the work
- Publishers do a comparatively small amount of work
- Publishers get the money
- Academics don't get any money
Just because people might object to some of the four points, that doesn't mean they object to all of them.
Academics do most of the work - Most academics wouldn't object to this state of the affairs. Of course academics do most of the work in publishing (especially reviewing) - they're the ones who are qualified to do it. You can't have some bureaucrat take care of reviewing the work, you need someone who knows the field.
Publishers do a comparatively small amount of work - Academics might grumble at this, but there's a comparatively little that the publishers are qualified to do. Typesetting, printing, maintaining the journal website, administration in the reviewing process ... and that's about it. All the actual content decisions have to be done by knowledgeable people (academics). There's certainly some journals which try to offload things like typesetting onto the authors, but in part that's financially driven ...
Publishers get the money - This is the main point of upset. Publishers charge what is viewed as an excessive amount. ... but it's not that they're charging money per se, it's more that academics lose access to the content due to expense. Most academics were completely satisfied when they had access through (paid) library subscriptions. It's only when budget cuts (and publisher price increases) caused libraries to cut subscriptions that academics got upset. But again, it's less having to pay for things and more not being able to access everything they need.
Academics don't get any money - This is the point you're addressing. However, I'd say most academics don't have a problem with it. Refereeing for a journal is considered by most to be community service - it's something that needs to happen, and they're the only ones qualified to do it. It's quid-pro-quo: others review your articles, and you review other people's. Attempting to make it a paid-for enterprise makes the person asking for the money seem greedy.
So where does that leave you? Academics (mostly) don't have a problem doing most of the work - and doing it for free. The complaints are on the publisher's side: they're charging too much for what little they do. Demanding that publishers pay academics for reviewing isn't going to change that. If anything, it will make journal access more expensive, as they now need to pay for reviewers.
So charging a fee when reviewing isn't going to fix the problem, and as Mark Meckes mentions in his answer, asking for one is only going to make you look naive and greedy to the (academic) editor who you're in contact with. Note that there's a very big difference between "Decline to review based on principles" and "Decline to review ... unless you pay me".
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