featherbedding
C2CEFR level
92/100Rarity: very rare
TechnicalRegister
Law noun
A union practice of compelling an employer to pay for work not performed or for workers it does not need.
Demanding we keep three idle stagehands on every show is plain featherbedding.
Business noun
Preserving unnecessary jobs or staffing levels, typically to protect employment under restrictive work rules.
The old contract mandated a second driver on every truck, pure featherbedding that doubled the wage bill.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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