🐢 A slow protest 🐢 To protest at work

work to rule

7.2

A protest where employees slow down by doing only required tasks

noun

Literature

: trabajar a reglamento

The teachers implemented a work to rule strategy, arriving exactly on time and leaving promptly, to protest their working conditions.

Examples

As part of their protest, employees began to work to rule, causing delays in production.
The union threatened to work to rule if management refused to negotiate.
When the dispute was not resolved, staff decided to work to rule rather than strike.
The employees decided to work to rule during the negotiations.
Many workers work to rule when they feel undervalued.
During the labor dispute, the workers chose to work to rule, enforcing every regulation to minimize productivity.
In response to the management's cuts, the team agreed to work to rule until their demands were met.

Synonyms

go-slow

vswork to rule

1 7.4

A protest where workers work slowly on purpose to pressure their employer

slows tasks by following rules strictly and doing only contractual minimum

Antonyms

to push oneself harder

4 3.5

Try much harder to work or train

How Disruptive

to strike

133 3.2

work to rule

Literature

7.2

go-slow

1 7.4

to underdo

1 6.1

Surface Forms

work to rule singular

work to rules plural

Morphology

work + to + rule

The phrase can be parsed compositionally as 'work according to (the) rules', so a learner who knows 'work' and 'rule' can infer that it involves following rules. However, the conventional sense — deliberately following rules as a form of industrial protest to reduce efficiency — is a specialized, pragmatic meaning not predictable from the parts alone, making the expression only partially transparent.

Etymology

Work to rule (noun) comes from a simple idea: workers literally work only to the rule, doing exactly what the rules and contracts say and nothing extra. So it means 'a protest where employees do only the minimum required to slow production'.