The word Sabotage is said to derive from French, as derived from the word “Sabot” or wooden clogs workers often wore. As according to IWW lore early labor disputes were handled with the workers purposefully clogging the machines with their shoes when working conditions were too hard, long, or otherwise inhuman. The use of purposefully disrupting efficiency became a tactic to initiate a strike or to negotiate to a settlement with the bosses.

Though, the etymological source of the word disagrees with this assertion, but it’s close enough. The word “sabotage” certainly does stem from “sabot” or the wooden clogs, but often associated with such groups as the dutch, Luddites, Canuts, and others). But the full meaning of Sabotage in French means “to walk noisily” which may all the same have been synonymous with a strike or labor dispute.

All the same, the French working class wielded sabotage with impunity and utilized it in protest against the bosses or even the government when conditions were too hard or pay too low. Big Bill Haywood on his visit to France brought back to America the strategy of sabotage to the IWW after witnessing a French rail worker’s strike where the entire working population of rail workers went on a nation-wide walkout. The French government responded by drafting them all into the army and deploying them back to their jobs. The workers responded by letting rations sit idle across the country, idled, and re-routed trains bound from Paris to Marseilles and elsewhere until the government surrendered. The art of sabotage is not to destroy, but to creative bungle and mismanage a project at the bottom level to use financial damages against the large wallets of the bosses states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage\#Etymology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQuvNkqGLCw