down tools

down tools (third-person singular simple present downs tools, present participle downing tools, simple past and past participle downed tools)

1. (informal, UK, idiomatic) To stop work, especially when taking industrial action.
   • 2020 January 2, Conrad Landin, “Strife and strikes in post-war Britain”, in Rail, page 51:

     But when railway workers downed tools almost a year later, on September 26 1919, Britain was in many ways still a country at war.

   • 2023 January 22, Heather Stewart, “First industrial action at Amazon UK hopes to strike at firm’s union hostility”, in The Guardian‎:

     In Coventry, 300 GMB members plan to down tools over long hours, bad management and a 50p-an-hour pay rise[.]

• “down tools”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.