sabotage

Traductions

• anglais

  Date : 1984

  Définition

  Direct action by employees to injure or destroy an employer's income or property.

  Note :

  It is a form of striking on the job, slowing down, or the actual destruction of tangible property. It has been suggested that the term derives from "sabot", the wooden shoe of French peasants, which when tossed into machinery produced the same result as that, in the American phrase, of "dropping a monkey wrench into the machine". Professor Albion Taylor has described the use of sabotage in connection with the development of syndicalism and revolutionary unionism. He writes in part: "The Industrial Workers of the World, organized at Chicago in 1905, was such a body, its chief ambition being to unite all the workers of the country into a labor union committed to bitter opposition to the present economic and political order... The Chicago group is an example of quasi-anarchistic revolutionary unionism, whose ultimate aim is freedom in industrial association, the organization of one big union in possession of all factories, mines, farms, transportation facilities, and other organizations, together with the elimination of governmental interference in industry. It condemns not only collective bargaining but political action, and advocated direct forms of industrial action, such as the general strike, boycotts, and sabotage. Sabotage may consist merely of 'soldiering' on the job, or it may involve the violent practice of burning wheat, soaping tracks, slitting lacing on belts in factories, putting sand in machine boxes, and even more destructive acts..." The authorities do not necessarily agree that the destructive acts of sabotage go as far as to include action which involves danger to human life. The description and definition of sabotage set out the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences runs in part: "Sabotage, in the parlance of the labor movements, refers to the strategy of obstruction of or interference with the processes of industry by employees in order to reduce the profits of the employer and so compel him to accede to their demands. It is one of the forms of direct action, a means of exerting economic rather than political pressure. Sabotage may assume a variety of forms, ranging from the peaceful practices of restriction of output and 'taking things easy' to the disabling of machinery and the dynamiting of plants. The leading advocates of sabotage, however, have opposed the permanent disabling of machinery and personal violence, and it is generally agreed that sabotage does not include acts directly involving danger to human life."

  Terme :

  1. sabotage