Journal of Industrial

Relations
http://jir.sagepub.com/

Sabotage and Industrial Conflict

Don J. Turkington
JIR 1976 18: 183
DOI: 10.1177/002218567601800207
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Sabotage

and Industrial Conflict

DON J. TURKINGTON*

STUDIES

which class industrial sabotage as a form of industrial convirtually none on the nature and extent of sabotage as perceived by the parties in industrial relations. Do the parties see sabotage as a
sign of industrial conflict? Do they consider that acts of sabotage are common
or uncommon? Is sabotage generally individual or organized in character? It
is to such questions that this note is addressed. The views reported were
gained as part of a broader study on industrial conflict in New Zealand with
special reference to three industrieS.2
Among the main methods of gaining information were visits and interviews,
and questionnaires. In the case of two of the industries studied-meat freezing
and building and construction-the questionnaires contained questions on industrial sabotage. These two industries account for a disproportionately large
share of total New Zealand stoppage activity and for a considerable proportion
of the total levels of some other conflict forms.3 The broader study sought to
outline the conflict patterns of these industries and of the waterfront industry
and to evaluate possible influences on them.
Hobsbawm argues that in the domestic system of manufacturing and in the
early stages of the factory-era, sabotage, in the form of machine-breaking, was
&dquo;a traditional and established part of industrial conflict&dquo;.4 Do participants in
two contemporary conflict-prone industries regard sabotage as part of industrial conflict? Management and union representatives at the plant level (meat
freezing) and contract level (building and construction) were asked in the
questionnaires to what extent they considered sabotage to be a sign of industrial
ABOUND

flict,l yet there

are

Lecturer in the Industrial Relations Centre, Victoria University of Wellington,

are due to G. R. Hawke and N. S. Woods for
helpful comments made during the preparation of this note.

Wellington, New Zealand. Thanks

1. See, for example, Clark Kerr, "Industrial Conflict and Its Mediation", American
Journal of Sociology, Vol. LX, November 1954, p. 232; Arthur Kornhauser,
Robert Dubin and Arthur M. Ross (eds), Industrial Conflict, McGraw-Hill, New
York, 1954, p. 14; and Richard Hyman, Strikes, Fontana, London, 1972, pp. 102-

103.
2. Don J. Turkington, "The Significant Factors in Industrial Conflict, with Special
Reference to Three New Zealand Industries", Ph.D. thesis, Victoria University
of Wellington, 1975. The contents of this note are largely not covered in the
thesis.
3. The meat freezing and building and construction industries employ only 9.3 per
cent of all wage and salary earners yet accounted for 54.6 per cent of all workers
involved in industrial stoppages, 51.8 per cent of man-days lost and 38.3 per cent
of stoppages by number over the decade 1964-73. Over the years 1968-70 they
accounted for 26.1 per cent of all industrial accidents and for about 25 per cent
of calendar days lost due to accidents.
4. E. J. Hobsbawm, "The Machine Breakers", in his Labouring Men: Studies in the
History of Labour, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1964, p. 7.

183

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184
or industrial discontent (building and construction).
5
from Table 1 that there was a variety of perceptions within each
category of respondent. In both industries, however, unions tended to associate
sabotage less strongly with unrest or discontent than did managements. Among
managements, those in the construction industry tended to identify sabotage
more closely with unrest or discontent than did their freezing industry counter-

unrest

It

can

(meat freezing)

be

seen

parts.
It

is interesting

to compare

management and union responses from the

same

plant or contract. In meat freezing, responses of management and union from

a given plant were identical in four of seven cases, but in building and construction responses from the same contract were different in nine of 11cases.
Such a discrepancy in the degree of conformity of local management and union
responses between the two industries was unusual in the broader study and
may reflect the difference in the identifiability of sabotage which is discussed
later.
TABLE 1

THE EXTENT TO WHICH SABOTAGE IS CONSIDERED A SIGN OF

INDUSTRIAL UNREST OR DISCONTENT

Notes :
1. Respondents in the OTHER category indicated that sabotage "signifies unrest of
the individual only".
2. The HIGH to NOT AT ALL categories are those of the building and construction questionnaires. In the case of meat freezing, this question was openended and the answers were coded into this classification by the author.
3. Response rates for the meat freezing questionnaires were 71 per cent for
managements and 47 per cent for unions. Those for the building and construction
questionnaires were 100 per cent for managements and about 60 per cent for
unions (although responses from at least one union on site were received from
13 of the 14 major contracts then in existence). The investigation of the building
and construction industry was confined to very large projects.

5. The questionnaires were developed in consultation with representatives of

managements and unions. In the case of construction, it was felt that the sense
of this question would be clearer in that industry if "discontent" were used instead of "unrest". While all efforts were made to use words which would convey
a meaning the same as that given by students of industrial relations to the term
"industrial conflict" neither these nor other words were defined, it being left to
the respondent to interpret them. There was nothing in the responses to suggest
that the use of the terms "industrial unrest" and "industrial discontent" in any
way influenced the results.

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185
Reasons why managements generally saw a stronger association between
sabotage and unrest or discontent than did unions were suggested by other
questionnaire responses. Some union respondents equated sabotage not with
conflict but with &dquo;irrationality&dquo; or &dquo;mindlessness&dquo;.~ One said it is &dquo;usually
mental&dquo; and another that &dquo;only minor acts (are) committed, more in the nature
of stupidity than actual industrial sabotage&dquo;. Moreover, union representatives
clearly did not sanction the use of sabotage, considering it an illegitimate tactic
in a conflict. Numerous unions which said sabotage is not generally a sign of
unrest or discontent commented in explanation along the lines that &dquo;construction workers are men and do not sabotage&dquo;; &dquo;construction workers just do not

do

it&dquo;; &dquo;industrial relations

are

such (here) that workers do not need to

descend to sabotage to draw attention to their grievances&dquo;; and the &dquo;union does
not condone sabotage-instant dismissal&dquo;. There was a strong tendency to cite
the local experience, in the course of an answer that sabotage was not a sign of
unrest or discontent. (This tendency was also evident among freezing works
Several unions said &dquo;we have not experienced sabotage&dquo; or
&dquo;it has not happened here&dquo;.
The tendency of construction managements to see a stronger association
between sabotage and unrest or discontent than their counterparts in the meat
industry might partly be explained by the more identifiable nature of sabotage
in building and construction. The assembly-line character of meat industry
production makes it difficult to distinguish machinery breakdowns resulting
from sabotage from those due to other causes. Several meat industry management respondents indicated that &dquo;the nature of many breakdowns could be
either an accident or an act of sabotage&dquo; or that &dquo;slides, knives and similar
articles getting into pre-breakers could be sabotage but just as easily accidental&dquo;.
The causes of damage to carcasses are also difficult to distinguish. In construction, on the other hand, &dquo;multilation or destruction of the work environment&dquo; is more frequently the obvious result of &dquo;conscious action or inaction&dquo;.7
As one industrial relations manager said during an interview, &dquo;sabotage tends
to come to the fore when there is unrest on the site. It takes the form of
sugar in petrol and in water, of a mans welding machine being continually
turned off or damaged, or of fibreglass mouldings being damaged&dquo;. While the
cause of many acts of damage on a construction site will clearly be difhcult to
identify, such occurrences as sugar in petrol or interference with welding
machines could hardly be ascribed to accident.
That construction unions did not see a significantly stronger relationship
between sabotage and unrest or discontent than meat industry unions may be
due to factors already noted. If sabotage is seen as irrational, unsanctioned and

managements.)

6. For a discussion of the relationship between sabotage and "irrational" behaviour see Laurie Taylor and Paul Walton, "Industrial Sabotage: Motives and
Meanings", in Stanley Cohen (ed.), Images of Deviance, Penguin, Harmondsworth, England, 1971, especially pp. 223-225. On the theme of the relationship
between sabotage and deviant behaviour which occurs outside the workplace
(see ibid., pp. 222-223), one meat industry management said "vandal types can
vent their emotion everywhere and the fact that they would in a works (or
plant) is purely related to them being employed. They would do the same if
employed in Disneyland."
7. Conscious action or inaction resulting in the mutilation or destruction of the
work environment is the essence of Taylor and Waltons definition of industrial
sabotage (see Taylor and Walton, op. cit., p. 219).

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186

illegitimate, it is not surprising that even in this industry it was frequently not
considered a sign of industrial discontent. Even the construction unions which
saw an association between sabotage and discontent in the abstract also noted
that cases of it locally were very infrequent or non-existent. Thus one of these
respondents said, &dquo;if sabotage was present in New Zealand it would show a
very high rate of discontent among workers&dquo;, but &dquo;I have seen only one such
case done by a member of my union&dquo; (whose summary dismissal was approved
by the union).
It can be seen from Table 2 that opinions on the frequency of acts of
sabotage at the local plant or site were uniform both within a category of
respondent and between categories. Unions were unanimously of the view that
acts were uncommon. As previously indicated, many union rewent further in commenting that &dquo;I have never seen it (sabotage)

locally such

spondents

or &dquo;in my part of (the)

of this nature have been nil&dquo;. All but one of the managements
which said such acts were fairly common also saw the extent to which sabotage
is a sign of unrest or discontent as &dquo;high&dquo; or &dquo;medium&dquo;. In only one instance
in each industry were management and union responses from the same plant
or contract different.

in New

project

Zealand&dquo;; &dquo;we have been free of sabotage&dquo;;

acts

TABLE 2
THE PERCEIVED

FREQUENCY OF ACTS OF SABOTAGE AT THE

LOCAL WORKS OR SITE

Material gained from interviews was consistent with the view that acts of
are infrequent. Many interviewees did not mention sabotage as a
factor in the local conflict situation and, of those that did, most said it was
either non-existent or at a low level. Only one management indicated that
&dquo;there has been a lot of sabotage here&dquo;. It must be remembered that an
observation that acts of sabotage are uncommon may at least partly reflect the
difficulty of identification. Several questionnaire respondents indicated this was
so in their cases. The problems involved in gaining information through
questionnaires, or for that matter interviews, are too well known to need
repeating here. With a subject such as sabotage the possibilities for misinterpretation or falsification may be even greater than normal. But it is difficult to
substantiate this in the case of the present study. Questionnaire responses gave
no indication that respondents misinterpreted the questions on sabotage to an
unusual degree or that they were concealing or distorting information more
than in respect of other questions. Moreover, requests for interviews were invariably granted and matters relevant to the local conflict situation were

sabotage

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187
did not appear to be treated by interviewees
different from other topics. In any event, the nature of sabotage
ironically makes it almost impossible to draw implications from observed
behaviour, so there is little alternative to questionnaires or interviews.
Construction managements were asked in the questionnaire: &dquo;If any sabotage
has occurred on your part of this project, in your opinion has it largely been
individual or organised?&dquo;8 All nine respondents chose the former characteristic.
While the other three categories of respondent were not asked this particular
question, it is clear from comments made that the tendency to associate
sabotage with individual action was widespread in these industries. The view
was frequently expressed that &dquo;acts of sabotage are usually by odd individuals
who feel they have a gripe but never sanctioned or organised by a group&dquo; or
that sabotage is &dquo;associated with an individual or small group airing their own
personal grievances rather than a concerted effort to upset things industrial
relations wise&dquo;. The tendency of union representatives to assign acts of sabotage
to individuals was to be expected in light of their previously noted opinion that
sabotage is an illegitimate and unsanctioned tactic in industrial conflict. That
sabotage is in reality not largely employed in a collective way by workers is
suggested by the fact that managements also considered it to be individual in

freely discussed. Again, sabotage

in

a manner

character.
seen by most management and all union respondents in two
New Zealand industries to be uncommon and, where it has
occurred, to be individual rather than organized in character. Less uniformity
was apparent in views on the extent to which sabotage is a sign of industrial
unrest or discontent, although managements as a whole saw the association to
be stronger than did unions.

Sabotage

is

conflict-prone

8. This question was suggested

tion of the questionnaire.

by

management representative during the prepara-

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