workingclasshistory:

On this day, 30 October 1961, the Ford car company attempted to introduce a reduction in daily tea breaks for their workers in Britain from 10 minutes to 5, which had been agreed by the trade unions. However, the workers had no intention of accepting the new arrangement, and began a self-organised campaign of on-the-job action against it. Instead of each worker collecting tea for their whole team, everyone queued up individually, and paid for their 3d cup of tea with £1 or 10 shilling notes so that change had to be counted out. This prolonged the tea breaks to 30 minutes or more. Later they switched tactics, simply just sitting down for 10 minutes to drink tea, ignoring management directives to the contrary. Despite management attempting to spread misinformation, claiming that other departments were only taking 5 minutes, the workers kept up the action until March the following year when management gave in and reverted to a 10-minute break. Through the 20th-century there were a huge number of industrial disputes in the UK over the number and duration of tea breaks.
We’ve produced some mugs and other items commemorating these struggles to help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/tea
Pictured: a strike at Ford in 1968 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1842799345905207/?type=3