page_title: Sabotage
section_title: As industrial action
hierarchical_section_title: Sabotage / As industrial action
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: "Picchetto e sabotaggio: compagni di chi lotta", stencil non autorizzato a Torino English: "Picchetto e sabotaggio: compagni di chi lotta" ("Picketing and sabotage: comrades of struggling people"), unhautorized stencil graffiti in Turin
context_page_description: Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a saboteur. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identities because of the consequences of their actions and to avoid Invoking legal and organizational requirements for addressing sabotage.
context_section_description: At the inception of the Industrial Revolution, skilled workers such as the Luddites (1811–1812) used sabotage as a means of negotiation in labor disputes.
  Labor unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have advocated sabotage as a means of self-defense and direct action against unfair working conditions.
  The IWW was shaped in part by the industrial unionism philosophy of Big Bill Haywood, and in 1910 Haywood was exposed to sabotage while touring Europe:
  The experience that had the most lasting impact on Haywood was witnessing a general strike on the French railroads. Tired of waiting for parliament to act on their demands, railroad workers walked off their jobs all across the country. The French government responded by drafting the strikers into the army and then ordering them back to work. Undaunted, the workers carried their strike to the job. Suddenly, they could not seem to do anything right. Perishables sat for weeks, sidetracked and forgotten. Freight bound for Paris was misdirected to Lyon or Marseille instead. This tactic — the French called it "sabotage" — won the strikers their demands and impressed Bill Haywood.
  
  For the IWW, sabotage's meaning expanded to include the original use of the term: any withdrawal of efficiency, including the slowdown, the strike, working to rule, or creative bungling of job assignments. 
  One of the most severe examples was at the construction site of the Robert-Bourassa Generating Station in 1974, in Québec, Canada, when workers used bulldozers to topple electric generators, damaged fuel tanks, and set buildings on fire.  The project was delayed a year, and the direct cost of the damage estimated at $2 million CAD. The causes were not clear, but three possible factors have been cited: inter-union rivalry, poor working conditions, and the perceived arrogance of American executives of the contractor, Bechtel Corporation.
caption: Unauthorized stencil urging sabotage and picketing
exif: {}