In Middle-Management Land: Semi-Alienated Labor

Off Our Backs, Jan/Feb 2004 by Flannery, Erin

In my paid-work life, I am an editor, which makes me what is known as "middle management." My labor seems to be semi-alienated-not, I hasten to say, because I am middle management, but because I work for a nonprofit organization. (I'm not referring to my work for a feminist collective, which is not paid, except in satisfaction.)

I think Karl Marx was right about alienation-work is alienated if you do not own the means of production and cannot control your own work life. I would say that mine is semi-alienated because my labor is not going to enrich a capitalist owner, but I don't own the means of production, either. Although I have been working for the same place for many years, I could be dismissed at any time, and I certainly couldn't produce the magazine I edit without the nonprofit organization. The organization is hierarchically run, so I don't have a great deal of say about how it is run.

Middle management has been described as having no power but a lot of responsibility. That is quite true, in my experience. As a result of the gains of the women's movement, many women (mostly middle-class women like myself) have jobs in middle management, and I imagine that many face dilemmas similar to those I face.

I don't, of course, question that it is more pleasant in many ways to be a middle manager than to be a worker in a lower position. I have a higher salary. I have more say about who is hired and about how my workday is structured.

I decide what articles go into the magazine that I edit, and that is a great deal of what makes my work interesting. I also am very proud of my nonprofit's goals, and I am fond of a number of my coworkers. I want to keep working there.

However, it is frustrating working in a hierarchical structure, particularly because I have worked so many years in a feminist collective and am convinced that collectives work better. I am used to saying pretty much what I think at my feminist collective, and it is irritating to be in an environment where I have to be very careful what I say and who I say it to.

I am not allowed-that is correct, not allowed-to communicate with the men who are more than two levels above me, even though I have been acquainted with them for many years, even though they are at times the ones who could best answer my questions in a difficult situation. That development is fairly recent, and I resent it bitterly. It's a Catch-22. They will be upset if I don't make the decisions that they think I should, but I can't consult with them when I'm making the decision. The man between them and me can't bear to let me communicate with anyone higher up, even in a relatively small organization.

It's easy to be a supervisor, right? Wrong. Being a feminist supervisor is not easy. I assume that being a feminist means that I must treat the people (there are just a few) whom I supervise fairly, which means that I must accommodate their needs and work around their eccentricities. And I have supervised and do supervise people who are very good people and very good workers but are eccentric as hell.

I was once ordered to fire a woman whom I didn't want to fire because those above me thought she made one too many mistakes. I begged them to allow me to just tell her that she needed to get another job; they did, I told her, and she got a job within two weeks, without being fired and spending a period with no job.

One woman whom I supervise has been known to make very loud criticisms in a public hallway of a man who has a higher position. She is perfectly right, but I have to warn her that she mustn't talk that way in public.

I have had to work very hard to keep people who don't deserve to be fired from being fired because of their idiosyncrasies. I have beaten my brains out trying to keep someone who didn't want to be transferred from being transferred. I finally succeeded, but I was a nervous wreck afterwards. I am sometimes not able to get salary increases for people who need and deserve them. Someone higher up who doesn't work with them has a different opinion of them. I worry about all of this.

In an earlier version, I wrote in more detail about all of this, but I then expunged the details because I was too afraid of being fired if certain people at my workplace guessed that I had written this article, even under a pseudonym. My job is so specialized that I couldn't get another job in which I did the same thing. That's another feature of being a middle-management professional: the aspects of the work that one enjoys are, in a sense, a trap.

Being a supervisor means (at least to me) being responsible for people, worrying about them. And often not having the power to do what you feel you should do for them, to pay them what you feel they deserve. This seems like a classic "women's" situation-a little like being a mother in a patriarchal family. It's no wonder there are many women in middle management.

Now that I've nearly talked myself out of being a supervisor, I must admit that one thing is worse than supervising people-having to answer to people "above you."