I'm sure it does, but it's not.
>Powerful people are punished less for their lack of understanding of less powerful
That's not true. Or it's true in some situations and not in others. It is also true in some situations of subordinates.
>Who has more reason to worry, a manager making a joke about firing someone, or an employee making a joke about forming a union with their coworkers?
There are occasions where an employee can make a joke that would get a manager into trouble or into MORE trouble if they made that joke. There are behaviours that would get a manager into trouble and not the employee. The managerial and subordinate positions each come with their own set of rights, responsibilities, and privileges. My good friend, for example, declined a managerial 'promotion' because he was happy doing what he was doing and didn't want the extra stress and pressure. Back in uni when I worked as a part-timer at Staples, my manager was the hardest worker I've ever seen. She pulled crazy hours while some of us messed around and did as little as we could to get through the shift. To top it all off, she is the one that got yelled at by difficult customers, and not us - even if we screwed up. You can come up with alternative examples where the manager was a lazy bum and employees were super hard workers ... why? Because human organizations are complex and each one has different dynamics at play and different cultures. So thinking about it terms of the idiotic and shallow 'privilege' idea misses all those dynamics and complexity. So no, 'privilege' is not the right metaphor for the discussion at hand, and it isn't straightforward.