The company at the time continued to pay more to male than to female workers, and the women walked out in protest, gathering at the local Griffin pub. Trico eventually gave in after 21 weeks, offering the women workers their legal equal pay. This strike is now commemorated in a local folk song, written by Sam Richards, Totnes, Devon, UK. Its fifteen verses describe the struggle to gain legal recognition of equal pay rates. A national disgrace, not just for the Trico employees, but most other major employers of the times. Trico were the unfortunate party to be recorded, by posterity, in the national press for this. Ironically, the strike was held in the summer of 1976, this was the hottest and longest water drought for a hundred years, breaking all the known heat records. This is why the right wing press attached the nickname "Costa del Trico" (owing also to the irony - that new fashionable booked Spanish " Costa" summer holidays at the time, were actually cooler, but more expensive that very hot long summer).