Someone I know had this issue working at a hospital. They were an ultrasound manager (does front line ultrasounds but also coordinates the team) . The union excluded “management” though, so they were much more senior than their reports and got paid less as they weren’t Union.

I mean that sounds ideal unless you can have a proper employee ownership/cooperative model. This hard line keeps political lines clear between labor power and management and generally the power seeking go into management roles.

Middle management are the foot soldiers for capital in the war of equity and profit sharing - making that muddier only helps investors.

It’s a shame that there’s are likely good managers caught up in this, with labor advocating for them, but this hierarchical structure is fundamentally broken and needs to go away.