Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🐢 A slow protest 🐢 To protest at work
to work to rule

to work to rule

7.5
Follow rules exactly to make tasks slower as a protest
  • idiom
  • Literature
translation icon : trabajar a reglamento
  • When negotiations failed, the workers decided to work to rule to pressure the company.

Examples

  • The union advised its members to work to rule as a protest against the management’s new policy.

  • Faced with unfair conditions, staff began to work to rule rather than strike.

  • Let's work to rule!

  • The staff will work to rule this week.

  • The employees decided to work to rule to express their dissatisfaction with the new schedule.

  • As a form of protest, the workers chose to work to rule, ensuring every regulation was followed to the letter.

  • Amid rising tensions, teachers began to work to rule in response to budget cuts affecting their resources.

Synonyms

to follow the rule
vsto work to rule
55 2.8

Do what a rule says

is performed deliberately to protest by slowing work and reducing efficiency
to comply with regulations
vsto work to rule
  • Formal
1 3.4

Follow rules or laws that apply to you

is used as a deliberate protest to reduce efficiency without striking

How Disruptive

to strike
133 3.2
to work to rule
  • Literature
7.5
go-slow
  • UK
1 7.4
to underdo
1 6.1

Surface Forms

work to rule infinitive
worked to rule past
worked to rule past participle
working to rule present participle
works to rule third person singular

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 (verb) shows a clear picture: staff begin to work only to the rule, following every rule, taking full breaks and refusing extra tasks to slow the job. That's why it means 'to follow all rules very strictly as a way to protest and reduce how much work gets done'.