Featherbedding is a union practice in the US that requires employers to use minimum staff sizes for certain tasks or pay for unnecessary work to compensate against the dismissal of workers due to new technologies. The Lea Act and Taft-Hartley Act made it illegal, but the US Supreme Court has interpreted them narrowly. The practice is still considered a legitimate collective bargaining strategy.
In the USA, Featherbedding refers to a union practice developed as a compensation against the dismissal or dismissal of its workers due to new acquired technologies. The practice may require employers to use minimum staff sizes for certain tasks or pay for unnecessary work. Practices referred to as featherbeds are usually negotiated by a union for inclusion in collective bargaining agreements with the employer.
The interest of unions is to keep the largest number of members employed at the best possible wages. Employers are interested in creating the best product in the most cost-effective way. With the continual advances in technology, tensions still arise over the feather bed. Historically, the government’s reaction to the practice has been to try to ban it.
The Lea Act, passed by Congress in 1946, addressed union practices in the broadcasting industry. The law made it illegal to compel a broadcaster to employ “any person or persons in excess of the number necessary to provide the actual services”. A year later, the Taft-Hartley Act made it illegal for a union to require in an employment contract that its members receive wages for work they did not perform, declaring it an unfair labor practice under Department of Labor regulations.
Both statutes have been interpreted very narrowly by the US Supreme Court. Employers may be required to pay wages for unnecessary or useless tasks, provided the work has been performed. In one case, a newspaper printed advertisements that its clients had prepared. The terms of the collective agreement between the newspaper and the union required the newspaper to rework the advertisements using union workers. The Court held that payment to the union’s printers was lawful because they did their job even though the advertisements prepared by the client were placed in the newspaper.
Payments to workers who did nothing were also considered legal as long as they were willing to do work that should have been available to them. The case involved union musicians under a collective bargaining agreement with a theatre. The musicians played whenever an orchestra from another city performed. No orchestras were booked or scheduled to perform for the theater; however, the workers were prepared to perform under the contract.
The featherbed practice arose when unions resisted displacement of members by new technologies. Today, including minimum work team sizes and assigning “make-work” tasks in the absence of any other work are still considered legitimate collective bargaining strategies as they maximize wages and keep workers employed. It’s just a negotiation to be paid for work available but not done, which is considered an unfair labor practice.
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