VISITORS to France have always had to watch out for strikes that might disrupt their holidays or business trips. So far this year air-traffic controllers, taxi drivers and (this week) dockers have walked out. Last November it was the railwaymen. Plus ça change, you might think. But the pattern of French industrial action is changing. A study commissioned by the labour ministry found that the number of days lost to strikes has fallen since the late 1990s—yet the number of French firms hit by industrial disputes went up by roughly half between 1998 and 2004.

That is because workers now favour short, sharp walkouts lasting less than a day, and these fail to register in the official figures. They inflict the maximum disruption with the minimum loss of workers' pay. In a world of just-in-time production, a just-in-time walkout, or a union meeting that strays beyond the break, can wreak havoc and put pressure on management. Workers at Toray Plastics Europe, in south-east France, won a dispute this way last month.

Technology is also transforming traditional industrial disputes. Blogs are being used to draw outside attention to disputes within companies and win support from consumers, politicians and the local community. Workers at a subsidiary of Fnac, a retailer, used a blog to rally support and gather evidence for a redundancy protest, which they then took to employment tribunals. Workers at a Savoy furniture firm used a blog in a campaign that won them an improved redundancy offer. At La Redoute, another store chain, workers have set up a blog called “On redoute La Redoute” (we fear La Redoute) to stay informed about possible closures of branches and call centres, and to organise resistance.

The internet allows expressions of discontent to be aggregated, giving workers the opportunity to stage protests without actually going on strike. The most dramatic example came last September in Italy, at the local arm of IBM. About 2,000 employees of the computer giant—logging on from home to dodge legal problems—staged a virtual protest against a new pay settlement at IBM's corporate campus in Second Life, an online virtual world. A month later the head of IBM Italy resigned and the RSU union agreed on a new pay deal. This innovative use of the internet was recognised with an award at the Forum Netxplorateur, a conference held in Paris in February. The award was presented by the president of Microsoft France.