Ah, but the managers are usually the ones that decide who gets fired. If they fire you, you can be back on the job somewhere else in a few weeks. If they fire themselves, what other manager would hire a former manager who even implied that a manager was the least productive employee in the unit? That's crossing the thin green line, man!

Half of a manager's job is justifying the importance of management to the employees, and the other half is justifying their own importance to their superiors.

Let's put it this way. I have never been kept around long enough to see my own manager get fired. And I have been through 3 mergers.