Featherbedding - Non-economic Perspectives

Non-economic Perspectives

Legal scholars and certain social theorists argue that featherbedding may be an expression of the concept of a job as a property right. These analysts argue that while the owner or employer has the "right" to extract profit because of his or her investment of capital, so the worker has the "right" to extract profit because of his or her investment of labor. Featherbedding, it is argued, arises and becomes a significant problem in places where the job property right is not part of the legal regime and remains unprotected (such as the United States).

Seizing on economists' emphasis on power in the workplace, other social theorists conclude that featherbedding is a result of weak labor unions and unenforced and unprotected worker rights. Under this analysis, featherbedding is a response by unions to their weakness, not strength.

The literature is replete with "featherbedding" or "restrictive" rules that are hard to justify. Yet, before using these examples to condemn work rules as such, one has to be clear as to what the reasons are behind the restrictions. Why, for example, have unions resorted to job control devices, such as rules of demarcation and jurisdiction or seniority rules that sometimes conflict with flexibility? Frequently one finds that these rules originate in serious problems of employment insecurity or grave deficiencies in the security or recognition of trade unions.

Improved workplace employment rights, improved economic policies and less antagonistic labor-management relations, it is argued, would reduce featherbedding.

Others see certain kinds of featherbedding as a corrective for market failures. For example, the delivery of social services is often not quantifiable except in the extreme. When the market is unable to quantify a good or service, the market will fail to accurately price it. Market failure results. In complex organizations, or in those whose inputs and outputs are difficult to quantify, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine what constitutes featherbedding. For example, defining "quality health care" is problematic, as is defining a "quality education." In such situations, frontline professional workers place heavy emphasis on work rules and minimums. Many white-collar professionals (in particular those such as nurses and teachers) and highly skilled craft workers place heavy emphasis on staffing minimums, for example, as a means of ensuring a "high quality" outcome. While some argue that this is an exercise in the professional judgment of such workers, others call this featherbedding and point to the low level of evidence that such rules improve outcomes.