All here know that there are many employees not happy about their current labor agreements - itching for the chance to renegotiate.

There have been anecdotal reports of cancellations and delays in recent days seemingly related to labor actions which I'd characterize as "strictly by the book" actions.

I may have witnessed and overheard such an action yesterday . . . though I'm reluctant to say where (small station).

We were seemingly all loaded and ready to go 10 minutes prior to departure - in fact the GA had already wished us a good flight and was clearly ready to close the door. All that was needed was a fuel chit. After several minutes the FO come back to check on the hold up.

I was on a 752 in 6C just in front of door 2L. The conversation I overheard went something like this: "(FO) What's the deal with the fuel slip. (GA) I've already called down 4 times, I'll check again. (FO) We're all ready to go up here - I'm gonna head back up. (GA to Purser) I thought their slowdown was supposed to be on the weekend . . . looks like they decided to start early!"

Lo and behold the fuel chit showed up on the strike of the minute we were supposed to depart. The GA added a comment like "wow, he timed that just perfect" as she closed the door.

Anybody else here any whisperings about work slowdowns or similar - or did I just read to much into a partial conversation between perhaps largely uninformed parties?