Slowdown
industrial action used by workers to pressure management
A slowdown (UK: go-slow) is an industrial action in which employees perform their duties but seek to reduce productivity or efficiency in their performance of these duties. A slowdown may be used as either a prelude or an alternative to a strike, as it is seen as less disruptive as well as less risky and costly for workers and their union. Striking workers usually go unpaid and risk being replaced, so a slowdown is seen as a way to put pressure on management while avoiding these outcomes. Other times slowdowns are accompanied by acts of sabotage on the part of workers to provide further disruption.
Nonetheless, workers participating in a slowdown are often punished, sometimes by firing and other times by law.
Examples
At Ford's plant in Dagenham, UK, during the 1970s, workers introduced a go-slow after Ford management increased the production line speed from 18 to 21 feet per minute. This was a second speed increase, and workers felt that this was unfair. After a go-slow by production line staff, Ford management reduced the line speed back to 18 feet per minute.
In July 2011, Qantas engineers introduced an unusual slowdown where right-handed engineers used only their left hands to operate essential tools.
Rule-book slowdown
Another form of slowdown is known as the rule-book slowdown.
“Slowdown” enters the record as industrial action used by workers to pressure management. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Slowdown, industrial and action can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q31351. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Slowdown” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.