Meanings
- gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of featherbed
- USuncountableThe employment of more workers than is necessary, typically because of labor union rules (or sometimes deals with organized crime, a government, etc), especially upon the introduction of new technology.
Two factors made the Ministry untenable; private industry considered the featherbedding of the public sector to be unfair competition. Since the DC depends on private industry for much of its support, continuing the practice would have compromised this support.
2020 September 11, James Walston, The Mafia and Clientelism: Roads to Rome in Post-War Calabria, Routledge, →ISBN1 more example
It [Pemex, Mexico's state-owned petroleum company] eventually grew bigger than Gazprom, the Russian state oil company, but it has always had a problem with internal malfeasance and featherbedding. “Corporate governance is poor,” says Duncan Wood, head of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center. “It’s disorganized. There are little fiefdoms within it. They strike deals with organized crime and turn a blind eye.”
2019, Seth Harp, “Blood and Oil”, in Rolling Stone
Cite this entry
featherbedding. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/featherbedding
“featherbedding.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/featherbedding. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “featherbedding,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/featherbedding.
Source: featherbedding on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.