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Do you disagree with how the company you work for is run? Are they on the BDS list? Are they a fossil fuel company or SUV manufacturer? Is strike action not an option? Try hiding under a rock! Alternatively, adopt ‘slow-down’ tactics among your colleagues. These methods of industrial action are intended to slow down the efficiency of companies without risking disciplinary action. ‘Slow-down’ might take the form of playing everything ‘by the book’ and taking procedural processes VERY SERIOUSLY. In practice, corners are cut, so why not become that sticker for the rules and make sure everything is signed off exactly how the bosses intended? In an industrial dispute in 2011, right-handed Australian workers at the airline Qantas started using their left-hands. So get out from beneath that rock, and if you’re stuck by circumstances working for a bad-guy, get creative with your resistance - and organise offline with your colleagues. Crab Museum takes no responsibility for you getting the sack, but it’s worth thinking about what power we still have over the world around us.
I have maybe a dumb question, are the bosses supposed to know about the slow-down? Is the idea to pressure them to do something, or is sabotage the whole point?
Not always, but it can be a specific form of extremely legal public sabotage. Teachers have used it a few times in the UK because plenty of corners are cut in practice, and it is absolutely impossible to fire them for following their government legislated requirements to the letter, no matter how much time it wastes.
The idea may be pure sabotage. It may also be for them to kind of know, ie they can tell things are running slower/breaking more, but they can’t tell what’s going on or prove any conspiracy. Either are worthwhile strategies in certain cases