seniority

1. The state of being older than another or others or higher in rank than another or others.
2. Precedence of position, especially precedence over others of the same rank by reason of a longer span of service.

Seniority is defined as the length of service by an employee in a continuing or temporary job or position. In some employment situations, time in supplemental positions may be added to an employee's seniority as well. Seniority is typically an issue for human resources managers and is important in managing resources, establishing compensation methods and policies, negotiating collective bargaining agreements with labor unions, and determining individual pay in some organizations.

Seniority may be used as a tie-breaker in overtime distribution, in hiring from a previous layoff list, or as a factor in consideration for vacant positions in a company. Seniority may be used to determine pay in organizations instead of or in addition to a merit-based pay system. If organizations do not pay employees on the basis of doing the same work and holding the same level or rank in the organization, they must determine a basis to make a pay distinction or differentiation. In a large organization, compensation specialists within the human resources area may make these determinations and may consider an employee's seniority in the pay decision.

Seniority Today

According to a recent article in Fortune, seniority no longer matters in most companies. In the past, when employees were fired, the younger or junior members were the first to be let go. Today this situation tends to be reversed, due to changes in the world and in the work place. Even with a good economy firms no longer respect the hierarchy and may eliminate jobs held by the most senior employees. The Fortune article suggests that companies have less tolerance for employees who are earning in excess of their output, and this is typically a characteristic of the most senior members of an organization. Today an older employee can be replaced by someone younger earning less than half as much salary.

While seniority was valued in the past, for many people today, the longer you have been with a company, the more your job may be in jeopardy. Technology is cited as the reason for the change. Younger workers are perceived as more creative and innovative and may have more relevant educational experiences and training. Just as the product life cycle has shortened, so too has the career cycle of employees. Today job change and diversity of experiences is valued more than seniority.

Seniority in Japan

In the past, the seniority system in organizations was a measure of job security in the employment relationship. Even in Japan, where lifetime employment has long been the norm for large, traditional businesses, many companies are abandoning these plans and no longer offering lifetime employment.

Employment practices in Japan—which were once characterized by seniority, company unions, and lifetime employment—have been undergoing a structural transformation as the nation struggles to correct current economic issues. Since the collapse of the Japanese bubble economy early in the 1990s, Japanese companies, like their American counterparts, have been forced to restructure and have adopted a system of determining promotions and salaries not on seniority but on merit. This has dramatically changed their once-treasured code of seniority, according to Focus Japan.

In addition, the percentage of workers belonging to labor unions has steadily dropped, eroding the influence of the once-powerful Japanese company unions. Today's younger workers and new entrants to the job market are becoming less interested in the prospect of lifetime employment. As a result, many are considering entrepreneurship and self-employment as a more viable career choice.

Further Reading:

"The Growing Mobility of Labor." Focus Japan (Tokyo). October 2000.

Munk, Nina. "Finished at Forty." Fortune. February 1, 1999.

Valletta, Robert G. "Declining Job Security." Journal of Labor Economics. October 1999.

Supreme Court justices have traditionally employed seniority to resolve a variety of issues. Generally, seniority is determined by the length of time a justice has held a seat on the Supreme Court. The chief justice alone is exempt from the considerations related to seniority.

Some of the consequences of the seniority tradition involve matters of etiquette. The senior justices may choose to occupy the four larger office suites in the Court's building. They are also given the more spacious spots around the Court's conference table, with the four junior justices crowded along one side. The newer justices are seated on the ends of the dais in the courtroom. The most junior justice functions as the gatekeeper, receiving and sending messages during the Court's private conferences; he or she also speaks first when the Court publicly announces the decision in a case.

Seniority controls more important procedural matters. In conference, the justices speak in descending order of seniority. This sequence allows the long‐term members to frame the issues, shape deliberations, and exhaust discussion of relevant perspectives on a case, often to the frustration of the more junior justices. And when the chief justice, normally responsible for the important task of assigning the job of drafting the opinion in a case, is not part of the majority, the senior associate justice who is part of the majority coalition assumes the task (see Opinions, Assignment and Writing of).

In most instances, seniority provides a simple and efficient method for resolving questions of etiquette and procedure. However, there have been a number of instances in which the seniority of particular justices has been unclear. When two or more vacancies arise simultaneously, confusion may occur. Scholars disagree as to the line of succession for several nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century justices.

Bibliography

• George A. Christensen, Supreme Court Succession, or, Who Succeeded Whom, The Supreme Court Historical Society Quarterly 4 (Summer 1982): 2–7

— Robert J. Janosik

A convention, or unwritten rule, widely used in legislatures, especially in the United States, whereby status and other resources are allocated in proportion to length of service.

In the past seniority has been an organizing principle of great importance in both houses of the US Congress. Seniority determined the size and situation of members' office space, the quality of their committee assignments, their speaking opportunities in those committees, and, above all, their chances of becoming a committee leader. In the early twentieth century, seniority was itself seen as a reform to modify the arbitrary power of the Speaker of the House. In the last two decades, the significance of seniority has diminished considerably but has by no means been eliminated.

It is in the House of Representatives where the changes in seniority have assumed greatest significance and as the Democrats controlled that chamber continuously from 1955 to 1994, it is the initiatives emanating from that party that are particularly worthy of attention. In the pre-reform Congress the chairmanship of standing committees went automatically to that member of the majority party with the longest continuous service on that committee. The rationale for such arrangements was twofold. First, it avoided the intrigue, the conflict, and the damage to personal relations that would otherwise result. Second, specialist committees are much dependent for their strength on expertise. In a seniority system the most senior members will normally have become experts and the career ambitions of others will encourage them to remain on committees where they will acquire the specialist knowledge and understanding needed for effective committee work.

Reformers, on the other hand, objected that seniority favoured members from one-party areas of the country, most notably the Democratic South, who were well placed to achieve the repeated re-election necessary to move up the seniority ladder. As a consequence, committee chairmanships in the House became the preserve of conservative Southern Democrats, unrepresentative of the nation as a whole. It was also argued that seniority allowed positions of great power to be bestowed on intellectually mediocre and sometimes tyrannically inclined legislators. Seniority, moreover, was destructive of party, allowing members hostile to the wishes of the majority of the congressional party to move into agenda control positions.

Early in the 1970s, the selection of committee chairmen was made subject to House Democratic caucus approval and in 1975 three chairmen were actually removed. Ten years later the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee was deposed and replaced by a congressman who leapfrogged over several colleagues with greater seniority. Seniority has been followed in the appointment of all other standing committee chairmen, but the fact that successful challenges have been made has profoundly altered the ethos. It has become particularly weak in the appointment of subcommittee chairmen.

— David Mervin

Precedence or preference in position over others similarly situated. As used, for example, with reference to job seniority, the worker with the most years of service is first promoted within a range of jobs subject to seniority, and is the last laid off, proceeding so on down the line to the youngest in point of service. The term may also refer to the priority of a lien or encumbrance.

A person who holds a lien or has an encumbrance against the property of another, so that her claim must be satisfied before any others, has seniority or priority.

An employee has seniority if he is among those with the most years of service at the place of employment. Such seniority entitles the employee to compete for promotion to jobs for which junior (less senior) employees would be ineligible or would receive less consideration. Traditionally, it also gives him the status of being among the last to lose his job in case of lay-offs.

In the 1984 case of Firefighters Local Union No. 1784 v. Stotts, 467 U.S. 561, 104 S. Ct. 2576, 81 L. Ed. 2d 483, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of a seniority system that protected the jobs of white firefighters with seniority at the expense of recently hired black firefighters. The fire department in Memphis, Tennessee, implemented the traditional seniority principle of "last hired, first fired." In 1981 three white firefighters who otherwise would have kept their jobs under the system were laid off for a month while minority firefighters with less seniority continued working. This change in the seniority system resulted from an injunction to enforce consent decrees that resolved equal employment opportunity cases in Memphis. The lower court fashioned the decrees to remedy the past discriminatory practices of the fire department in its hiring and promotion of minorities. The district court concluded that the seniority system was not a bona fide one under section 706(g) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 since lay-offs made pursuant to it would have a racially discriminatory effect. The court, therefore, directed the modification of the system to increase and maintain the percentage of black firefighters. The court of appeals affirmed the revision of the seniority system but disagreed with the holding that the system was not bona fide.

On certiorari, the Supreme Court decided that the district court exceeded its authority in issuing the injunction that ultimately led to the lay-off of the senior white firefighters. The injunction was not a proper remedy. There was no finding that any of the black employees protected by the revised system had been a direct victim of discrimination, a requirement imposed by the Court in International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 97 S. Ct. 1843, 52 L. Ed. 2d 396 (1977). The Court, however, did not decide whether the consent decree was valid or whether the Memphis Fire Department could, on its own, protect the jobs of black firefighters at the expense of their white colleagues who had more seniority.

See: Affirmative Action; Civil Rights; Employment Law; Equal Protection; Labor Law.

Length of service on a job. Seniority may be considered in making decisions about wages, layoffs, and other working conditions.

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2009)

Seniority is the concept of a person or group of people 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;the knowledge or skill that one obtains after a certain amount of experience.

Contents 1 As length of service 2 In politics 3 In unionised companies 4 In human relationships 5 See also

As length of service

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 (or commanding) in any way over the junior senator (unless, for example, the senior senator is chair of a committee on which the junior senator serves). 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

In politics

In unionised companies

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, or "last on, first off"). 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.

In human relationships

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.

See also

• Authority
• Gerontocracy
• Hierarchy
• List of current United States Senators by seniority
• Lockstep compensation
• Seniority (financial)

This organization-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)