Seniority
From Wikinfo
Seniority is the concept of a person or group being in charge or in command of another person or group. This control is often granted to the senior person(s) due to experience or length of service in a given position, but it is not uncommon for a senior person(s) to have less experience or length of service than their subordinates.
More generally, "seniority" can be a description of an individual's experience or length of service, and can thus be used to differentiate between individuals of otherwise equivalent status without placing them in a hierarchy of direct authority. For example, in the United States Senate, the senator from each state with the longer tenure is known as the "senior senator" and carries some additional responsibilities to their state's constituents, but they are not formally dominant in any way over the junior senator (unless, for example, the senior senator is chair of a committee on which the junior senator serves).
In unionised companies, employees may enjoy more work privileges, such as shifts deemed more favourable, work deemed easier or more pleasurable, or assignment to work, when a work reduction, or a reduction in available work hours results in lay offs, whereby the preference for those who may stay and work is assigned as a function of seniority (first hired = last fired). Seniority also has an influence over bumping rights, which is a re-assignment of jobs, possibly for many people at a time.
Subordinates are generally expected to follow the actions, orders, or requests of those senior to them with little or no question.
Seniority is present in most common relationships, be it between parents and children, siblings of different ages, or workers and their managers. It plays a large part in military and paramilitary command structures.
In certain cases, seniority (in the sense of the amount of time with an employer) may be the sole determining factor of pay, as with certain teachers or airline pilots. In the United Kingdom, seniority is termed "long service. As the result of a ruling October 3, 2006 by the European Court of Justice on a case which originated in the UK paying employees with long service more is a violation of equality laws. The plaintiff, backed by the Equal Opportunities Commission and her union, Prospect, argued that more pay for male colleagues based on length of service amounted to sex discrimination because women were more likely to take time off from work and thus have shorter service.
See also
References
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Seniority" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seniority, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
