# Work-to-Rule

> Work-to-Rule is mapped as the withheld hand: it reveals that production and services depend on organized human cooperation.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:labor-class:work-to-rule` |
| Family | Labor & Class Power |
| Domain | Political Economy |
| Kind | movement |
| Archetypal function | The Withheld Hand |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Work-to-Rule belongs to the **Labor & Class Power** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Work-to-Rule reveals that production and services depend on organized human cooperation, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Work-to-Rule, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Withheld Hand.** Work-to-Rule is mapped as the withheld hand: it reveals that production and services depend on organized human cooperation.

## Gift

creates bargaining power, solidarity, and material redistribution; through Work-to-Rule, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

protects insiders, hardens bureaucracy, or discounts unpaid and informal labor; Work-to-Rule can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Work-to-Rule to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Withheld Hand enters through Work-to-Rule. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Work-to-Rule becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**role.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Work-to-Rule; another player names a countermove. Initiative 5.

## Relationships

- **enables — Slowdown:** Slowdown enables Work-to-Rule by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **constrains — Union Recognition:** Work-to-Rule constrains Union Recognition by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **mobilizes — Memory:** Work-to-Rule mobilizes Memory by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **enables — 50501 Movement:** 50501 Movement enables Work-to-Rule by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Work-to-Rule from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Work-to-Rule is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Work-to-Rule: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [National Labor Relations Act](https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/national-labor-relations-act) — National Labor Relations Board, 1935. U.S. collective-bargaining and protected concerted-activity framework.
- [Freedom of Association](https://www.ilo.org/topics-and-sectors/freedom-association-and-right-collective-bargaining) — International Labour Organization, ongoing. International labor principles and collective bargaining.
- [198 Methods of Nonviolent Action](https://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/) — Albert Einstein Institution, 1973. Tactic taxonomy; inclusion does not imply effectiveness or ethical endorsement in every context.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
