sympathetic strike
- noun
- /ˌsɪmpəˈθɛtɪk straɪk/
:
huelga de solidaridad
- The union called a sympathetic strike to back the teachers who were already picketing.
Examples
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The workers organized a sympathetic strike to support their colleagues.
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Management was surprised by the scale of the sympathetic strike that disrupted multiple industries.
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Workers at the factory joined a sympathetic strike out of solidarity with employees at a neighboring plant.
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Many unions joined the sympathetic strikes across the country.
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The factory workers organized a sympathetic strike to support their colleagues who were protesting for better wages.
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During the national walkout, many unions joined in a sympathetic strike for labor rights.
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The teachers participated in a sympathetic strike to stand in solidarity with the striking nurses.
Synonyms
Workers stop work to support other workers on strike
How Supportive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The adjective 'sympathetic' (showing support or sympathy) combined with 'strike' (a work stoppage) yields the meaning 'a strike carried out in support of others' by straightforward compositional logic. This Adj+N pattern is common and has clear cross-linguistic parallels, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reliably infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The noun sympathetic strike comes from a simple image: sympathetic means feeling support and strike means stopping work. So workers stop working to help other people who are already striking, which is why the phrase means 'a strike to support other striking workers'.