to cross the picket line
4
7.3
- phrasal verb
:
romper la huelga
- If they didn't cross the picket line they were out of a job.
Examples
-
After careful consideration, she ultimately chose to cross the picket line to keep her job.
-
When we crossed the picket lines, the security guards ran video cameras to provide hard evidence in the event of an incident and to discourage anything from happening in the first place.
Academic text (1993) -
The first casualties of a teacher strike are usually the relationships between those who strike and those who cross the picket lines.
Academic text (1993) -
All teachers must sort out their reasons for either striking or crossing the picket lines and attempt to understand their values.
Academic text (1993) -
If you go to work today at Regalview crossing the picket line... we're done.
-
Administrators, parents, students, and the community at large may find it difficult to remain on good terms with both those who struck and those who crossed the picket lines.
Academic text (1993) -
Some parents have taken their kids to schools offering activities in lieu of classwork, but other parents don't want to cross the picket line.
Blog text (23) -
Heck, the bakers' union steward in Peoria crossed the picket line to work, and the Teamsters practically begged the bakers to concede.
Blog text (13) -
We have to bring back labor strikes as a normal part of American life—REAL strikes, with aggressive picket lines that stop the employer from running their business and physically prevent scabs from crossing the picket line.
Blog text (1) -
Dozens of employees decided to cross the picket line and return to work despite the ongoing strike.
Synonyms
1
9.9
Work during a strike while other workers protest, making the strike weaker
How Derogatory
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from the constituents: 'cross' (go from one side to another) + 'picket' (protesters standing outside a workplace) + 'line' (a formed boundary). A B1 learner who knows these words can infer that it means to pass through the protesters to enter the workplace (i.e. go to work during a strike), and this spatial/compositional logic is common across languages.
Etymology
The phrase cross the picket line comes from the image of striking workers standing in a line called a picket line outside a workplace with signs. To cross the picket line is to walk through that line to enter, so today it means 'to go to work' during a strike or to go against the group's 'support for each other'.