Word: featherbedding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Parachuter Starnes, said the professors, fell into no featherbed. He heard a terrific rush of wind past his ears; when he tried to talk he felt as though he were shouting into a high gale. He knew "he was falling and falling rapidly," for his body spun through the air...
Featherbed service rules began to get abusive after World War I, when the unions sought to offset layoffs and share speed-up savings by stretching the work. Veteran lobbyists, they also riveted many a cumbersome and costly rule into State safety laws. Then the National Railroad Adjustment Board, founded in...
Other industries have borne similar loads of taxes and wages but few have had to face such entrenched unions as the railroad brotherhoods, which resolutely resist the march of technological progress. Even when improvements sped up schedules the brotherhoods prevented any savings and successfully insisted on "featherbedding" which means paying crews on a mileage basis. They draw eight hours pay for 100 miles on a freight, 150 miles on a passenger train. Many "featherbed" crews now draw eight hours pay for runs of less than four hours...
To love and its attendant foibles Poet Gogarty's lighter vein is apt: Only the Lion and the Cock, As Galen says, withstand Love's shock. So, Dearest, do not think me rude If I yield now to lassitude, But sympathise with me. I know You would not...
''How the world is managed, and why it was created, I cannot tell; but it is no featherbed for the repose of sluggards." More than one student of Latin verse, reading the preface to the best edition of Manilius, must have been surprised to find this sentence. Few...