Workers involved know it means a loss of pay, and upsetting some people who will be affected. Also, it might not be effective.
Those watching are unwittingly caught up in the drama with arguments often reduced to soundbites to serve one side or the other.
It is easy for the substance of whatever is going on to get lost in the noise.
The right to strike in New Zealand has been reduced significantly since the heady days of the 1970s when strikes could go on for weeks.
Today, employees can legally go on strike if they are members of a union and collective bargaining talks break down, or if they believe there are serious health or safety issues at the workplace.
Many workers not in a union might not even grasp they have a right to strike over serious health and safety concerns.
In recent times, strikes have included senior doctors, nurses and just yesterday, secondary school teachers.
None of these professions would undertake this action lightly.
Doctors and nurses know patients waiting for operations will have procedures delayed, although provision is made for life-preserving care.
Much has been made by the government of the turmoil created for secondary pupils losing a day’s tuition, but anyone with a passing understanding of teenagers would know many of them would relish a longer doze under the duvet.
In recent negotiation breakdowns, instead of properly leaving negotiators to get on with the job, various ministers have got involved, telling us how much these professions are valued, but then inferring they are ungrateful well-paid graspers.
In the case of the nurses, their average pay, according to the government, inclusive of overtime and allowances, is $125,000 or even $127,000 a year. The $125,000 figure relied on information from Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora but try to get details on exactly how that figure was arrived at from payroll data and HNZ insists on a formal Official Information Act process.
Nurses have rubbished the figure as excessive.
Last week we had the spectacle of Public Service Minister Judith Collins claiming teachers after 10 years’ experience were on $140,000 and then later boosting that to $147,000.
Again, this figure was dismissed by the sector, but it took Ms Collins six days to apologise for this exaggeration. Education minister Erica Stanford, a minister usually known for her attention to detail, who was with her when she made the original claim, could have corrected it at the time.
It makes the government look silly and desperate and we wonder whether Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche, who is supposed to be handling the teacher negotiations, needs this "help".
Instead of Ms Collins and Ms Stanford telling off the teacher union for wasting their time on a slick marketing campaign rather than getting around the bargaining table, they might be better to turn that spotlight on the shortcomings of their own spin-doctoring.
This public finger-pointing by highly paid politicians, who never have to argue for their pay rises, is not a good look and hardly the way to persuade any of our frontline workers to stay here rather than pursue better pay and conditions across the Ditch.
What the skibidi was he thinking.
We have become used to strange language in the House this year.
Let’s not relitigate that use of the "c" word or spines or even Winston Peters’ ongoing complaints about references to Aotearoa.
But on Tuesday, Chris Hipkins, showing he was up with the latest lingo in the Cambridge dictionary, asked the prime minister to admit that the government was all delulu and no solulu. (All delusion and no solution, in other words.)
While he might have thought this was clever (putting the hip into Hipkins), a quick Google search shows Australian PM Anthony Albanese used the same expression in relation to his Opposition in March.
You can decide whether Mr Hipkins’ copycatting was skibidi meaning cool or skibidi meaning bad.
