The emergence of labour utopias: Solidarity,visibility and agency in the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union strike

Abstract

In 2003, the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union (Kommunal) called a nationwide strike, demanding a pay rise for all members in the public sector. Drawing on oral history interviews with workplace representatives and local union officials, the article examines how the struggle enabled changes in subjectivity, generating utopian visions for increased visibility and agency for municipal workers. This process is analysed using Rick Fantasia’s concept ‘cultures of solidarity’, highlighting the strike’s prefigurative dimensions. The article suggests that the study of strike action is a unique opportunity to explore how utopian visions of more egalitarian labour relations emerge among workers.

Introduction

If we take an interest in utopias at work, an important question is when and how utopian visions of more egalitarian labour relations come into existence among workers. In what contexts, within the realm of working life, do they emerge, and what are the junctures in this process? In this article, I analyse recollections of the 2003 Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union (Kommunal) strike, with the aim of contributing to the understanding of collective action as a practice holding the potential of enabling workers’ empowerment and utopian imaginaries.

The strike, called by Kommunal to win a significant pay rise for all members in the public sector, is the largest welfare strike in Sweden to date. When it ended, many members and local representatives expressed disappointment with the union leadership for accepting an insufficient offer, and the strike was deemed a failure by the media. However, oral history interviews with workplace representatives and elected union officials at the local level show that the strike also held another dimension. In its concrete practices of solidarity, the collective struggle generated a re-formation of individual and collective subjectivity (Granberg, 2016), in which new horizons of opportunity were a central element. Among participants, utopian visions emerged of a new kind of visibility and agency for public sector workers.

I explore these processes through an analysis of the participants’ accounts of why strike action was needed and their recollections of the build-up phase, the strike itself, and the day the strike was called off. The analysis is inspired by Rick Fantasia’s concept ‘cultures of solidarity’ (1988), which refers to counter-hegemonic cultural formations that may develop among workers in the course of collective action. Fantasia’s concept is useful since it emphasises the link between collective action and changes in subjectivity. In doing so, I argue, it contains a utopian dimension: the emergence of solidarity between workers poses, in itself, a challenge to capitalist labour relations, and at the same time has the potential of giving rise to new expectations and visions among participants. In my analysis, I make the utopian dimensions of ‘cultures of solidarity’ explicit, by relating the concept to the municipal workers’ experiences.

While there exists a rich body of scholarship that theorises utopia as rooted in the here and now, rather than as an unattainable fantasy or dream (Bloch, 1995; Dinerstein, 2018; Levitas, 2013, 2017; Salmenniemi and Ylöstalo, 2024; Wright, 2010), and on how a utopian framework might contribute specifically to studies of work (Dinerstein, 2018; Dinerstein and Pitts, 2022; Salmenniemi and Ylöstalo, 2024; Weeks, 2011) and labour law (Kullmann and Iossa, 2024), the analysis of workers’ collective struggles has not been at the forefront of utopian studies. This article addresses that gap and argues that attention to collective action, especially how workers themselves experience participation in labour conflicts, is important for understanding how utopian visions come into being, but also for shedding light on the obstacles and contradictions that might complicate or undermine those processes.

The next section outlines a theoretical framework for the study and, at the same time, engages with existing research on utopias that moves beyond the dichotomy utopia/reality, as well as with research on subjectivity changes in labour conflict. The third section contextualises the strike and then follows a section on methodology. In the fifth section I present the results, tracing the cultures of solidarity and their utopian dimensions in the narrators’ recollections of the strike. The sixth and final section argues for the study of labour conflict as an important way of understanding how utopias can emerge among workers.

Utopia, cultures of solidarity and changing subjectivities in labour conflict

Concrete utopias

While utopia is originally associated with detailed visions of an imaginary, perfect society and therefore with idealism (Levitas, 2013; Weeks, 2011), scholars have tried to move beyond the dichotomy utopia/reality, suggesting ways of anchoring utopian visions in the real world (Bloch, 1995; Dinerstein, 2018; Dinerstein and Pitts, 2022; Kullmann and Iossa, 2024; Levitas, 2013, 2017; Salmenniemi and Ylöstalo, 2024; Weeks, 2011; Wright, 2010). An influential contribution is Ernst Bloch’s ‘concrete utopia’, which shifts the ‘conception of utopian thought and desire from the merely illusory’ (Weeks, 2011: 193) to something ‘concerned to deliver the forms and contents which have already developed in the womb of present society’ (Bloch, 1995, vol. 2: 623). Another central concept for Bloch is the ‘Not-Yet-Become’, which points to the fact that reality is a process that does not only extend backwards but also forwards, meaning that ‘anticipating elements are a component of reality itself’ (Bloch, 1995, vol. 1: 197), or, in the words of Kathi Weeks, that ‘everything real has not only a history, but also a horizon’ (2011: 189).

Several scholars have emphasised the need for a praxis-orientated conceptualisation, stressing that problems must be confronted ‘in practice rather than thought alone’ (Dinerstein, 2018) and that utopias are ‘material processes embodying and realising other ways of being’ (Salmenniemi and Ylöstalo, 2024: 1159). However, utopias often seem to presuppose intentionality in the sense that ideas or practices are understood as tools used to reach an intended goal. Salmenniemi and Ylöstalo, for example, explore what they call ‘everyday utopias’: spaces and practices that experiment with alternative ways of life and create new social imaginaries, testing and living out utopian visions with the ‘attempt to create on a small scale the change one wishes to encounter in society at large’ (2024: 1146). I am interested in how, within the realm of labour relations, utopian visions come into existence in the first place: that is, how they ‘can emerge, not as a prerequisite of . . . articulations, but as their product’ (Weeks, 2011: 224). As argued by Dinerstein and Pitts, ‘labour struggles . . . open prefigurative possibilities that cannot be thought in advance’, not before ‘subjects [have] involved themselves in prefigurative collective actions’ (2022: 100, 101).

While these are mainly theoretical accounts, Olsén et al. (1993) have empirically explored the development of utopian visions among workers in the Danish fishing industry, who participated in researcher-initiated workshops around work-related problems they were interested in solving. At first, the ideas that came up in the workshops were simply inversions of the workers’ criticism of the everyday lack of control and information at the factory, but gradually wishes for participation and better managers were ‘intensified into a Utopia of joint property and self-government’, accompanied by other visions for how work could be more democratic, enjoyable and meaningful (1993: 502–503). A crucial argument is that this expansion of the social imagination took place within workshops that were not just aiming for democracy but in themselves anticipating democracy: a free space without the routines and hierarchies of everyday working life. In her study of utopian temporality in the 2018 pensions strike undertaken by the University and College Union in the UK, Heather McKnight (2019) also stresses the significance of the collective break from ordinary work practices. She argues that by making the campus a strange, conflicted and transformative space, the strike reached beyond the pensions debate and demonstrated radical utopian potential.

Transformative dimensions of labour conflict

This article relies on a Marxist understanding of labour as a social activity fundamental to the production of society itself, including its subjects, meaning that work is a constitutive link between social structures and subjectivities (Weeks, 1998: 185). Wage labour is a ‘unity of opposites, both a place for exploitation and a place where potential agents of change are created’ (Gimenez, 2001: 32) and labour conflicts are a concrete expression of this fundamental contradiction. Arising because workers lack other forms of power over labour, they are at the same time potential arenas for the formation of collective strength (Gimenez, 2001; Weeks, 2011). If work, when performed as expected, represents the everyday and ‘normal’, labour conflicts can ‘speak’ about things that are usually out of sight and unknown. Hence, they offer a unique opportunity to explore how we, consciously and unconsciously, understand work and ourselves as workers (Fantasia, 1988; Granberg, 2016).

Some labour scholars have discussed transformative aspects of collective action, suggesting that ideas and visions can be as much a result of the struggle as a prerequisite. The contribution I find most useful for analysing the municipal workers’ recollections of the 2003 strike is Fantasia’s Cultures of Solidarity (1988). Claiming that consciousness is not a static attribute or a possession that one ‘has’, but an active cultural process that is complex and shifting, shaped through social activity (1988: 107), he argues that engaging in labour disputes opens possibilities for changes in self-understanding and understanding of the world. Cultures of solidarity, thus, are implicitly a theory of how ideas emerge from praxis, making the concept especially relevant for analysing utopian visions in collective action.

By studying four examples of local workers’ struggle in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, Fantasia demonstrated that counter-hegemonic cultures of solidarity emerged and grew among those who participated in the mobilisations. ‘[N]either ideas of solidarity in the abstract nor bureaucratic trade union activity’, cultures of solidarity are ‘formations that rise in conflict, creating and sustaining solidarity in opposition to the dominant structure’ (1988: 19). They are shaped by the society in which they arise, but at the same time challenging it, as solidarity represents an antithesis to the individualism and competition generated in capitalism (1988: 72, 237). As such, cultures of solidarity are prefigurative: that is, ‘practices that might characterise an imagined better future’ (Levitas, 2017: 7).

A culture of solidarity does not need to contain specific elements or appear in a predefined way but varies between different strikes, time periods and collectives. Fantasia mentions increased political awareness, broadened horizons of possibility and insight into the strength of the collective as possible components, but the core feature is that individualism is confronted by collectivism through concrete action (1988: 11, 337). A culture of solidarity does not arise automatically simply because everyday life is ‘disturbed’ by an exceptional situation, like a strike (Atzeni, 2009; Fantasia, 2013; Hyman, 1971: 26, 52–53); a combination of favourable conditions and conscious action is required. Neither does it necessarily evolve into something bigger. Rather, solidarity often has a fragile and fragmented character (Fantasia, 1988: 23).

Feminist scholars have expanded the understanding of transformative dimensions in labour conflicts by discussing the experiences of women workers and how gender is both shaped by and shaping collective struggle (Briskin, 2007). In her study of women workers in the strike at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation in 1985 Margaret Fonow (1998) argues that the formation of cultures of solidarity can challenge normative scripts for doing gender. Burcu Saka (2019) has, in an interview study, demonstrated that a metal workers’ strike in Turkey challenged the gendered division of labour in the factory. Eva Schmitz has shown, by way of oral history, that the lack of status ascribed to the striking cleaners at ASAB in Sweden 1974–75 informed their struggle as well as the process of empowerment that the strike started (Schmitz, 2007; see also Pálmadóttir et al., 2023) and Jaqueline Briggs (1995) has used oral history to explore the politicisation of women who performed solidarity work during the 1984–85 miners’ strike in the UK.

The studies mentioned are important contributions to the understanding of transformative aspects of labour conflicts, and they indicate that oral history interviews are a productive way of exploring such aspects. However, the emphasis is on the manufacturing industry during the 1970s and early 1980s, a period of resurgence for workers’ struggles (Brenner et al., 2010), and most of the conflicts were wildcat strikes or had strong elements of local self-organisation. Several of the studies explore how participation affected women lacking prior experience of trade union struggle, or do not discuss the significance of such experience (Spence and Stephenson, 2007). In contrast, this article analyses transformative aspects of a nationwide strike that was called and controlled by a large and well-established trade union, and the interviewed workers were already trade unionists. The strike was carried out by welfare workers, during a period of relatively few labour conflicts and after more than a decade of neoliberal restructuring of the public sector: a decade characterised by retrenchment and imperatives of fiscal responsibility. As Tom Moylan aptly puts it, the end of the 20th century was ‘marked by anti-utopian deprivation rather than utopian achievement’ (2000: 103). In a context so different from the upsurge of the 1970s and early 1980s, could a strike still generate utopian visions?

Methodology

The method used is oral history, which is well-suited for exploring experiences of work and workplace struggles, and the ways in which people relate to these when looking back (Moore, 2011; Moss, 2015; Portelli, 2011). While oral sources might be insufficient when it comes to covering the economic aspects of a strike, they are superior when the aim is to explore other forms of gains and losses.

The article is based on in-depth interviews with 10 municipal workers who were involved in the strike at the local level. Five served as workplace representatives for the union and picketed outside their own workplace or a workplace nearby. The other five had been elected to paid local positions either part-time or full-time and were involved in organising and coordinating local strike activities. The choice of interviewing union activists at the local level was based on a desire to speak to people who were involved in organising the strike on the ground, and who could reflect on the strike in light of a continued trade union engagement. To contextualise the oral narratives, the interviews were supplemented with articles from trade union press (LO-tidningen, Kommunalarbetaren and Kommunal-Nytt).

I chose to seek interviewees in three different cities to cover a range of occupational groups. The aim was not to achieve representativeness in the traditional sense, but to create good conditions for obtaining diverse narratives. Based on the criteria, I used what is commonly referred to as the snowball method (Browne, 2005). The interviews were conducted over a four-year period, from 2012 to 2016. All participants were informed of the study’s purpose, that they would be anonymised as far as possible, and that they could withdraw their participation at any time. Each interview began with the signing of a consent form. The audio files and transcriptions were stored in a location accessible only to me.

The interviews, conducted in Swedish, covered a wide range of questions regarding how the municipal workers perceived the goals and content of the wage struggle. The themes around which the analysis is centred – cultures of solidarity in the strike and the emerging visions of visibility and agency that were part of them – were not chosen by me in advance but took shape through recurring emphasis made by the narrators. The themes will be presented in the fifth section.

The strike and its context

Kommunal represent welfare workers, mainly in elderly care, healthcare, childcare and special care. Around 80% of the members are women, and many are low paid. In 2003, Kommunal was not only the largest union affiliated to the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), but also the largest trade union in Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån [Statistics Sweden], 2004: 305). When the conflict broke out, over 85% of the union’s members were employed by municipalities or county councils and thus affected by the wage struggle (Kommunal, 2004).

The municipal workers have been at the centre of the construction, transformation and dismantling of the public welfare sector in Sweden. Once a vocal force against cutbacks and marketisation, Kommunal has gradually adapted to the neoliberal restructuring of the public sector and the associated restraint expected from the union in wage negotiations (Ekdahl, 2010). During the financial crisis of the 1990s, many jobs disappeared from the public sector, and the decade was marked by lagging wages for public sector employees and a general increase in class and gender inequality (Thörnquist and Thörnqvist, 2018: 96–98). When Sweden entered the new millennium, the crisis was over, but for the municipal workers who had borne the brunt of the cutbacks, things had not improved. In 2002, a survey showed that municipal workers suffered from pain, anxiety and insomnia to a higher degree than the rest of the population, and that the situation had become worse; 45% of municipal workers felt that their work environment had deteriorated over the last three years (Sjölander, 2002: 10). Additionally, the pay gap between the public and private sectors had increased significantly (Thörnqvist, 2007: 24). For Kommunal, it was particularly frustrating that the persistent pay gap between their members and industrial workers remained. On top of that, pay disparities within the public sector, between occupational groups organised by Kommunal and professions requiring higher education, were also increasing (Kommunalarbetaren, 2002: 5).

In the bargaining round of 2002, Kommunal demanded wage increases of 5.5% and raising minimum wages to 14,000 SEK per month (Bergsmark, 2002: 6–7). ¹ The employers’ organisation, the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), dismissed the claims as unrealistic and fiscally irresponsible (Thörnqvist, 2006). As the negotiations went on, Kommunal members across the country organised rallies and petitions, and pressure was building on the union leadership not to back down. On 8 April 2003, Kommunal gave notice of strike action, and the strike began on 23 April. It expanded gradually but was rotated among different occupational groups and locations, so that the negative impact on the public would be less. After five weeks, just before sympathy measures from two other LO unions were coming into effect, Kommunal accepted a bid from the employers and the leadership called off the strike. ² By then, 86,000 municipal workers had been on strike at some point (Linderoth, 2020: 13), mainly healthcare assistants, childcare workers, carers, cleaners, cooks, parking attendants and refuse workers, and the total number of strike days amounted to 600,000 (Medlingsinstitutet, 2003: 128).

The new central agreement covered all Kommunal’s members in the public sector, adding up to half a million employees. Instead of a 5.5% pay rise to be distributed in the subsequent local negotiations, the result was 3.95% the first year and 2.45% the second year. Contrary to what Kommunal had been fighting for, certain occupational groups were prioritised in the agreement. Workers in elderly and disability care, as well as some healthcare assistants, were to receive 5% in the first year, and childcare workers, care providers and some care assistants in the second year. For everyone else, the increase was 2.6% the first year and 2% the second year. Kommunal had demanded that the minimum wage be raised to 14,000 SEK per month and that demand was met, but only for those who had vocational upper secondary education and at least one year’s continuous experience in their profession (Jacobsson, 2003: 9; Medlingsinstitutet, 2003: 196).

Whether the result was a victory or not for the union became the subject of much discussion, both within the organisation and in the media. Many members and local representatives were critical of the leadership’s decision to accept the offer and call off the strike, especially before the announced sympathy actions had come into effect (Kommunalarbetaren, 2003: 7). However, as I will show, despite disappointment with the agreement and the abrupt end to the strike, workplace representatives and local officials also remember the strike as a transformative experience.

Cultures of solidarity and utopian visions in the strike

The logic of cultures of solidarity is intrinsically temporal: changes in subjectivity among the workers are linked to changes in praxis and therefore developing gradually during the course of collective action. To emphasise the connection between praxis and the utopian visions that emerged in the municipal workers’ strike, I have structured this section chronologically, in accordance with the different phases of the struggle. The first part focuses on how participants perceived their status in the workplace and the character of their union prior to the strike, illustrating that experiences of invisibility and lack of agency were at the heart of the grievances behind the strike. I then trace the formation of cultures of solidarity through the different phases of the conflict: the build-up, the strike itself and the ending. The analysis section ends with a synthesising discussion on the visions of visibility and agency that emerged in the struggle, making explicit the utopian dimensions of the cultures of solidarity. To avoid a romanticised or generic account, I also discuss the institutional conditions under which the cultures of solidarity developed, got their specific character and came to an end, stressing the importance of viewing such processes in their historical context.

Before the strike: Invisibility and lack of agency

In the municipal workers’ struggle, visibility had a practical and strategic importance, caused by the specific institutional conditions surrounding labour conflicts in the public sector. Lacking the possibility of inflicting immediate economic loss on the employer, and because the work involves caring for, providing services to or protecting people, strikes in the public sector tend to be political battles for hegemony (Thörnqvist, 2006: 105). Trying to win public opinion becomes a way to exert pressure on the politically elected employers, and gaining public sympathy requires more than picketing outside workplaces: workers must reach out to the public in various ways (Camfield, 2013; Ross S, 2013; Thörnqvist, 2007: 26).

However, visibility also had an intrinsic value, deeply rooted in the municipal workers’ longstanding experience of feeling invisible and taken for granted. While the demand for higher wages was undeniably material, being undervalued and ignored is equally emphasised in their stories of why the strike was needed. A recurring aspect of invisibility is the perception of the large size of the occupational groups being a weakness in relation to the employer, rather than a source of strength. Healthcare assistant Helen, who was a workplace representative at a hospital during the strike, explains that she and the other healthcare assistants were seen as a nondescript mass of interchangeable workers:

We have been a nondescript mass. That can be the downside of being many: ‘it’s just a horde of care assistants, a grey swarm that comes in and works and then disappears.’ But if you take, for example, the doctors. They are so few, and then it’s like ‘We have these two, it’s Kalle and Anna who are here’, so they are visible . . . . Sometimes I feel like we are just seen as a mass, a mass of care assistants. . . . Members who have called the department head, expressing dissatisfaction, have been told ‘Well, if it doesn’t suit you, maybe you shouldn’t work here.’ I mean, to get that response from your boss when you raise that things aren’t okay at work, and they say, ‘Well, you can just look for another job, there are others [who can take your place].’

The description of how the care assistants were seen as a horde of interchangeable workers contrasts with Helen’s remark on how the doctors at the hospital were visible not only as a professional group but also as individuals. A similar account is given by Anders, a psychiatric assistant and union representative during the strike, when he recounts an occasion where staff statistics were presented ahead of cuts at the hospital. The majority were made invisible, hidden away in the nondescript category ‘other staff’, while the smaller professional groups were counted individually:

We experienced that, to a large extent, we were invisible. People didn’t see that we existed. When they started discussing cuts, for example, if you looked . . . at the statistics of employees at the hospital, I was present at one point where it was reported that ‘this is the number of doctors employed, this is the number of nurses’, and then ‘other staff’. And other staff, that was us [laughs]. So, we were the majority, but we didn’t exist. And that was also an important task for the strike, to show that we existed.

Invisibility as a form of subordination is not uncommon in narratives about working-class labour strife, and demands for material improvements have often gone hand in hand with claims for respect and recognition, particularly for low-paid workers (Ross R, 2013). For care workers, the struggle for both symbolic and economic recognition is rooted in the fact that the work is naturalised and undervalued (Jordhus-Lier, 2012: 433; Mooney and McCafferty, 2005). The desire to be recognised and visible as performers of important work was crucial for the municipal workers’ willingness to go on strike and for the expectations that came to grow during the build-up. The struggle was carried out both in relation to male-dominated LO groups, and to welfare professionals with higher education, higher wages and who were treated as subjects in the workplace. The participants stress that welfare work in general is undervalued, but that the wage differences within the sector are too big and do not reflect that everyone’s contribution is equally needed:

I think the nurse is important, the midwife is important, and the care assistant is important. . . . Education should pay off, absolutely . . . but the wage differences are so gigantic. (Aina, childcare worker and part-time union representative during the strike)

Comparisons were also made between Kommunal and other trade unions and between municipal workers and other professional groups, when it comes to self-respect and standing one’s ground. In the participants’ accounts, Kommunal appears as a less militant union, and municipal workers as a collective who had for a long time accepted their subordinate position without speaking out. When Kajsa, a healthcare assistant and deputy section chair during the strike, recounts how she felt when discussions about going on strike began, she highlights that Vårdförbundet, the union that organises nurses and midwives, had previously taken strike action. She recalls rhetorically asking herself why ‘we always give in?’ and says that she felt it was time to ‘get on the barricades’. In the trade union press coverage of local activity before the strike, it is evident that there was widespread concern among members that their union would not stand firm in the trial of strength with the employers. A parking attendant expressed that ‘we have been servants for 25 years. And our organisation has accepted that. Now the pressure from below has become so strong that the union must take a stand’, while a workplace representative stated that ‘everyone is terrified that the union will back down’ (Gustafsson, 2003: 6–7). In the longing for visibility and vocational pride, the desire for collective agency and a union to be proud of were also important components.

The fact that visibility and agency were both ends and means for the municipal workers was, as we shall see, central to the shape that the cultures of solidarity (Fantasia, 1988) took in the struggle, and to the formation of utopian visions that were part of them.

The build-up: Preparations and rising expectations

In the months leading up to the strike, Kommunal carried out many actions in the public sphere to draw attention to the union’s demands. Since the counterpart was elected politicians in municipalities and regions, Kommunal initially targeted them directly, hoping that this – along with the media attention – would be sufficient. When the employers were not swayed by postcards, collected signatures in support of the demands, rallies outside council meetings or torchlight processions (Linderoth, 2020: 212–216), pressure and expectations grew among members that the mobilisation would have its logical continuation in strike action.

Remembering the build-up to the strike, the participants link their hopes for achieving change to an expectation of becoming visible as a collective, a desire that I have shown was deeply rooted in the experience of invisibility, interchangeability and lack of agency. Asked what her local section were most looking forward to, Margareta, a childcare worker and full-time local union representative, responds:

I think it was to show ourselves, to say ‘we are here, and we are doing a fantastic job, you must see us and understand’. And that they would see the difference if we removed the childcare workers from the preschools.

Childcare worker Elisabeth, a workplace representative at her preschool during the strike, describes the fighting spirit that grew in anticipation of ‘becoming visible on the map’:

There was certainly a passion to declare that ‘we are here, and we are doing a great job, and we deserve to be paid for it’. . . . You got a fighting spirit, that finally we will be visible on the map, that we can do something.

The anger and frustration that had been simmering beneath the surface for a long time, would finally find an outlet. The excitement for taking up the struggle for higher wages in an offensive manner grew and spread within the organisation as more people were drawn into the preparations. The mobilisation process involved transitioning from one Kommunal to another. A trade union’s ‘normal state’ within the Swedish model is what prevails in peacetime, where issues of wages and working conditions are resolved through cooperation or negotiations with the employer (Lundh, 2010). A readiness for strike always exists latently, for example in the form of a strike fund to provide conflict compensation to members, but a significant transformation of the entire organisation is required for the resources to be realised as instruments of power (Kelly, 1998).

As argued in previous research on subjectivity in labour conflict, mobilisations rarely concern morality (what is considered right), but rather outlook. Things that have previously seemed justifiable but impossible, or at least very far-fetched, suddenly appear within reach (Granberg, 2016: 32). The belief that municipal workers deserved better pay was already widespread among members; it was an important factor behind the strike. What changed during the build-up, however, was the outlook. A substantial wage increase now seemed achievable. Elisabeth recalls a ‘great expectation that it would end well’, and Aina remembers feeling confident that ‘things would turn out well for us; for everyone’ and that ‘5.5 percent was what we would get, as a minimum’.

Michael Biggs refers to this as a process of positive reinforcement within the collective. Those participating in a labour conflict become hopeful and expectations for the outcome rise, because others around them are hopeful and have high expectations (Biggs, 2003: 239). This has a performative component; it is not just about what is said regarding the strike, but also about the actions themselves – demonstrations, petitions or meetings – which materially reenact the struggle, creating higher expectations and increased self-confidence.

The interviews show that the build-up included both growing expectations and a strengthened fighting spirit among those who had initially been positive about the strike, as well as increased engagement among those who were sceptical. Ulrika, a cleaner at a school, initially felt worried about what the strike would mean for her and her colleagues, both financially and in terms of additional work after the strike. She describes how she gradually became ‘infected’ by the enthusiasm and confidence in her local union section:

I had young children at the time, so of course I was a bit worried, I was. But at the same time, I also hoped that something good would come of it. And I attended these extra [strike] meetings, so in the end, I became positive from all the positive things I heard there.

During the build-up, strike meetings, campaigning and preparatory tasks were all part of a new union repertoire. In the shared new practice, bonds were formed, and expectations and hopes grew, laying the foundation for the solidarity needed to endure the strike. Although the strike itself, in the sense of a work-stoppage, had not yet begun, the break from the everyday (Fantasia, 1988: 14) had commenced, and with it the transformation of subjectivity. The build-up can thus be understood as an early phase in the development of the cultures of solidarity that would further evolve and expand during the weeks of the strike.

The strike: Entering ‘another world’

Although the word strike itself refers to an absence – what someone does not do (wage labour) – in practice it is associated with a feverish activity. Once the strike started, campaigning intensified and picketing was added. The cultures of solidarity that had started to form were now more tangible, as the struggle entered a new phase, characterised by intense round-the-clock local activism. The strike jackets with the slogan ‘We take up the fight’ on the back, as well as other campaign material, were produced centrally and distributed by Kommunal, but what to do when wearing the jackets was largely decided locally, resulting in a widened repertoire of activities, with members’ ideas and the local conditions as the starting point. Members urged motorists to honk for higher wages, carried placards with cartoons by satirical cartoonist Robert Nyberg, came up with slogans and put them on homemade placards, banged pot lids together, wrote and sang strike anthems, demonstrated with a samba band, formed a human chain through the city, transported a strike bulletin by relay cycling: things that are all characterised by creativity and a certain amount of humour (Linderoth, 2020). The methods, recognisable from public sector strikes in other countries (La Rose, 2009; McKnight, 2019; Sørensen, 2014) but unusual in Sweden, constituted a clear break from the union’s regular way of operating.

The interviewees stress that the activities were enjoyable and attracted otherwise inactive members. Unlike in the reflections on why the strike was necessary, where being many was described in terms of anonymity and replaceability, it is the strength of being many that is emphasised in the memories of the strike itself:

People I’ve never seen in a demonstration before participated. There was such a fighting spirit. . . . I don’t think the municipal workers have ever been so fired up, as they were in 2003. They assembled in full force. . . . There was a very nice feeling of fellowship. . . . You met people from so many of the professional groups . . . showing how many we are. We are many, that’s just the way it is. Under the same banner. That was the most powerful thing. (Tord, caretaker and chair of his local section during the strike)

I remember that we formed a human chain through town. It was so much fun. With municipal workers who held each other’s hands all the way. And then we made a wave, and it rolled along the entire chain. . . . We don’t usually demonstrate. That is what happens on International Workers’ Day, but to be honest only a minority of the members participate. But during the strike a lot of people attended, showing the strength there is in a trade union if you only set your mind to it. It’s really cool that there are so many of us. . . . There is a power in that which is pretty awesome. . . . And it was fun bringing all your friends with you, because most of the time when you try to bring people along it can be difficult, but all of a sudden, because of the strike, so many people showed up. (Anders)

For many municipal workers, the build-up phase and the strike were their first encounter with an activist trade union struggle (Cohen, 2006), and it put them in the public spotlight in a way they were not used to. Passers-by cheered them on and urged them to stand their ground, and according to an opinion poll in April 2003, eight out of 10 Swedes supported the strike (Kamienski, 2003). The strike also received a lot of media attention (Lindgren Strömbäck, 2003). Being at the centre of Swedish political debate generated a feeling of symbolic payback for the invisibility they had experienced for a long time. Lena, a care assistant and chair of her local section, stresses the importance that the sudden visibility had for one’s sense of self-worth:

And you end up in the media. You become newsworthy, you become someone. Actually. And I think that’s important.

It was not only recognition from others that informed the changed self-image; it was also a process within the striking collective. Through the concrete strike practices, solidarity and a willingness to fight increased, and created a sense of collective strength and agency (Fantasia, 1988). One such practice, which, like the demonstrations, recurs in stories from the strike, is the early morning making and distribution of sandwiches to the pickets. Margareta vividly remembers when those who usually gathered at the local union office were joined by members who hadn’t previously participated that much in the strike activities:

There was a group of older ladies who decided to help making sandwiches in the morning; they wanted to be more active. When they arrived, there was giggling in the kitchen, and everyone got to work, even though they didn’t know each other beforehand. . . . There was this giggling and a special atmosphere; they giggled because they didn’t really know each other, but still, they were doing something together that felt a bit forbidden, which made it so lovely to arrive in the morning. And you know, that day we all felt it had been a good day. When we delivered the sandwiches at the picket line and said, ‘These were made with love, this morning’.

Lena also describes the sense of community that the sandwiches fostered:

It was really popular because it made you feel like there were many of us, that we were connected. . . . I think it was quite nice because those who were making sandwiches in the mornings weren’t the childcare workers who were on strike, but home care assistants and others who belonged to the section, from psychiatry and elderly care and so on, who came here to make sandwiches before going to work. It was because they wanted to be involved. And we were hoping that we would also get to go on strike.

The sandwiches symbolise how solidarity was developed and maintained among the activists. The sandwiches connected those who worked part-time or full-time for the union with those who were on picket duty outside their workplaces and those who were not on strike themselves but still wanted to help.

The significance of collective food preparations for the formation of solidarity has also been highlighted in research on women’s support groups during the 1984–85 miners’ strike in the UK. To some extent, it reproduces a traditional gender division of labour, but since it is performed in a public sphere and as part of a political struggle, it also challenges the dichotomy between emotional or reproductive work on the one hand and political work on the other (Spence and Stephenson, 2007). For the municipal workers, everyday tasks like making sandwiches took on a completely new meaning when their purpose was to sustain the strike; reproductive practices were collectivised and politicised.

The strong solidarity and unity, the new and creative campaigning methods, and the public space that the municipal workers claimed are all central parts of the cultures of solidarity that continued to grow during the strike. They also encompassed a changed collective self-image, in which the different occupational groups and the union emerged in a new light. For Aina, it was the childcare workers who underwent a transformation into a fighting collective that took up space in the public realm, and being a member of Kommunal took on a different, more positive meaning:

We were so strong; it felt like we were sticking together in some way, in a strange way. We had never done that before. It was nice to be a municipal worker; to belong to Kommunal, because we are so incredibly strong when we stick together. For the moment, it was lovely. . . . I had never experienced that the childcare workers were so strong, and they just screamed and shouted, made their placards, and went into town [to demonstrate]. It was like entering another world that you had never experienced before; it was so powerful, everyone stuck together, and everything just ran smoothly.

Aina emphasises that the experience was unprecedented, and the phrase ‘in a strange way’ suggests that it had an almost mystical quality to it (Fantasia, 2013). In recent decades, there has been an individualisation of employment conditions and wage policy in Sweden, meaning that union representatives now represent increasingly differentiated professional groups, where individuals in the same workplace compete for higher wages (Waldemarson, 2007). The solidarity generated during the strike was an antithesis to this everyday fragmentation (Fantasia, 1988). The strong feeling of community was so palpable that for Aina, it felt like entering ‘another world’, a tangible expression of the strike’s utopian dimension. Asked to elaborate on why it was like another world, she says:

It was like being in a big bubble; you only saw what was relevant to us, I don’t know – you forgot about everything else. When I got home, I planned how I would manage the next day, so that was the life we lived. You don’t do that otherwise; you have a hundred things in your head that you need to do, but somehow it [the strike] took up so much space. It was new, it was exciting, it was different . . . when you closed the door at the union office, it was six p.m., and you were really tired. I walked with my friend who lives nearby and who helped out – ‘Okay, are you going to buy the rolls tomorrow?’

The significant role that the strike played in their lives is also highlighted by Margareta:

It was really 24/7; we would sit at home or at [the union section office] sometimes. We could sit there all night long until the morning after, discussing things, not going home at all, that’s how it was. The kids, yes, there were many children who slept in the office too.

The strike became the all-consuming activity – a ‘big bubble’ – in a way that pushed other things into the background. Priorities changed, and the boundary between private life and union activism became less sharp, for example through altered care routines. With its collectivist organisation, the strike demonstrated alternative ways of living (Fantasia, 1988).

The strike differed from everyday life also in the sense that it represented another kind of unionism, with room for local agency and creativity. The experience of solidarity and increased grassroots engagement is linked to the strike activities and recalled in contrast to the everyday routines and low turnout. That union activities could be so exciting was a new experience, making deep impressions and fostering a longing for other – more activist and militant – union identities and practices than those usually available (Cohen, 2006). In the narratives, the strike appears in many ways as the union ‘as it should be’ – visible, inclusive and ready for battle.

The ending: Leaving the other world

When the strike ended, we ran out of air. I don’t know, it just felt – it didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem to give all that we had gathered strength for – we were so eager, going into town [to rallies] and everywhere. (Aina)

There was a fire in people’s eyes; they had so much fighting spirit and were so full of anticipation – fired up and ready to go! And a lot of people felt that it was like the balloon had burst. (Tord)

Metaphors about something bursting or that the air had ran out recur in accounts of the ending of the strike. The unexpected and sudden resolution, creating a sense of shock and anticlimax, stood in sharp contrast to the mobilisation, enthusiasm, creativity and heightened level of union activity that characterised the strike. Aina finds it difficult to pinpoint what it was that felt so wrong, saying it was ‘a disappointment in a way that perhaps can’t be explained’. The fact that Kommunal ‘hadn’t achieved everything they demanded’ was one reason she was dissatisfied. However, she also says that she doesn’t know what kind of ending she would have wanted, but that ‘the feeling was wrong anyway’, suggesting the wage agreement wasn’t the main issue. Rather, it seems that it was the abrupt break from that ‘other world’ of increased visibility and agency that made something feel off. It was hard to imagine having to return to work and everyday life, including the regular union routines, as if nothing had happened. The strike had contained not only a challenge to the power of the employers, but also, in its concrete local practices, a questioning of what or who was actually ‘the union’ – the leadership and the institutional structures, or the collective (Fantasia, 1988: 92).

The tension between grassroots members wanting to continue striking and a union leadership wanting to reach an agreement is by no means unique to the Kommunal strike, but a recurring theme in research on labour conflicts. It is important to emphasise that disappointment afterwards is not restricted to strikes where all demands are not met. It is not about ‘successful’ strikes and ‘unsuccessful’ strikes as two distinct opposing phenomena, but rather about what is built up during the conflict (Fantasia, 1988; Granberg, 2016; Mulinari, 2020). For the municipal workers, the transformative experience of solidarity and collectivism fostered a new need: what had initially appeared as a means to push through the demands became a goal in itself. When the strike jackets suddenly had to be packed away, a sense of emptiness set in:

The evening the strike ended, a large group of childcare workers sat here filling out conflict compensation forms and such, and . . . there were some sitting outside on the steps smoking, and they said, ‘Oh, how strange it feels. What are we going to do now’ [laughs] ‘when we don’t have the strike to live with at all?’ (Lena)

In the narratives about the resolution of the strike, it becomes clear that the struggle initiated a process that followed its own logic. The frustration with not being able to continue was not solely about an inadequate wage agreement, but also about what the strike prefigured. The municipal workers had managed to carve out a space in a society where they had long felt invisible and devalued. When the strike ended, the window of opportunity that the increased visibility and agency had opened was closed.

Utopian visions in the municipal workers’ strike: Visibility and agency

For decades, public sector unions have been expected to hold back by keeping their wage demands to a minimum and accepting cuts to public services. The municipal workers’ strike challenged such imperatives of fiscal responsibility. Through an analysis of the narratives of trade unionist municipal workers, I have shown that the strike had utopian dimensions, both in the sense that the strike itself offered a glimpse into what Aina calls ‘another world’, and that it generated new perspectives and expectations of a better future. The strike estranged municipal workers from the familiarity of the everyday (Weeks, 2011: 205), through the transition to different forms of social activity than wage labour and the normal union routines. During the struggle, the municipal workers in effect created something new, not because they set out to, but because ‘the demands of the conflict necessitated new social arrangements’ (Fantasia, 1988: 22). I have described what emerged as cultures of solidarity, comprising local autonomy, collectivised and politicised reproductive practices and increased grassroots activism, representing ‘the expression of solidarity and its creation simultaneously in the process of their development’ (Fantasia, 1988: 20).

The feeling of collective strength opened new horizons; the boundaries of what was perceived as possible were shifted. This meant that during collective action, the wage demands came to be seen not only as legitimate and reasonable but also as fully achievable. However, although the 5.5% wage increase exceeded what Kommunal was expected to ask for, it can hardly be understood as what Weeks calls a ‘utopian demand’, that is ‘a political demand that takes the form not of a narrowly pragmatic reform but of a more substantial transformation of the present configuration of social relations’ (2011: 176). The utopian dimension was not in the demand itself, but in the space that was created when the union refused to back down. In that space, collective visions transcending the claim for higher wages were allowed to grow. These included aspirations for visibility and agency, but rather than being explicitly phrased as such, they can be traced in the recollections of the various phases of the struggle, including the memories of the emptiness and sadness that followed when the strike was called off. The utopian visions, thus, were not in the form of detailed sketches of a perfect society, but manifested in the collective strength to aspire to something else than the status quo.

The visions took shape in relation to the conditions of public sector labour after the crisis of the 1990s and the experience of the everyday union routines. Discontent with the invisibilisation of municipal workers and with the compliance of the union preceded the strike, but the public attention and growing solidarity that unfolded surpassed what the participants were able to imagine before they had experienced it. The visions emerged from the struggle itself, rather than being predetermined. The collective practices prefigured visibility and agency, meaning that the utopian visions were a projection forward of traces that already existed, albeit embryonically (Levitas, 2017: 12). Through picketing, rallies and sandwich making, strikers manifested that they were no longer servile victims of a societal development beyond their control, but agents in the making of history. They emerged as visible and militant subjects, both to the public and to themselves. The activist practices within the context of the strike transgressed the boundaries of the union’s ordinary way of functioning and embodied ideals and prospects that challenged the frameworks within which work is organised. The strike offered a glimpse of what Sheila Cohen describes as ‘union-as-movement, an organisational form rooted in the class needs and demands of the rank and file’, rather than ‘union-as-institution’ (2006: 4).

Although solidarity has a self-reinforcing component (Fantasia, 1988), this was not a process that occurred automatically. Utopias ‘require labour to materialise their ideas of a better world’ (Salmenniemi and Ylöstalo, 2024: 1148). Many people worked intensively: making sandwiches, organising rallies, supporting the pickets, and so on. The social organisation of this (gender-coded) reproductive and emotional work was an important part of the strike’s daily infrastructure and thus of the heightened activity and solidarity that was created. The collective nature of the tasks, and the knowledge that they were performed to achieve a higher goal, politicised them and gave them a new dimension.

As Ruth Levitas puts it, ‘both the issues that preoccupy us and our posited transformations in response to them are heavily dependent on our social and historical circumstances’ (2017: 7). For the municipal workers, being a female-dominated working-class collective in the public welfare sector contributed to the specific shape that the cultures of solidarity took, including the visions they generated. A central aspect of this is that the build-up began long before the strike, with demonstrations and petitions to mobilise public support. The strike itself encompassed so much more than just a work stoppage and picketing. Through activism, the plurality of the municipal workers, which in Helen’s account makes them a ‘nondescript mass’ in the eyes of the bosses, was transformed into collective strength; by being absent from work they became present. The sudden visibility was crucial for the changes in subjectivity: as the workers stepped forward, they were recognised by others and by themselves as agents of struggle. Their own image of who could constitute a militant working-class collective was challenged. This reinforced the feeling of collective strength, generating visions for that kind of visibility and agency to continue.

Fantasia states that ‘industrial action embodies a transformative potential when it can achieve a degree of independence from the institutional structures designed to contain it’ (1988: 19). The experiences of the Kommunal strike show that collective processes that shape solidarity cultures among workers are not reserved for wildcat strikes, but the character of the strike as an official dispute within the Swedish labour market model informed the formation and limitations of the solidarity cultures. The decision to call the strike was made by the central board, as was the decision to end it, and under what conditions. Although the members had partly been involved in shaping the goals of the struggle, they were not involved in deciding when the goals were achieved. They were encouraged to mobilise before and during the strike, but that process was also expected to come to a halt when the strike was called off. The power of the collective could not grow further, meaning that the transformative potential of the struggle was not fully realised.

Concluding remarks: Utopias in collective action

Too little attention has been directed towards labour conflicts as catalysts for visions of alternative ways to organise work and human relationships. As Fantasia (2013) has noted, research has primarily focused on the ‘corporeal’ forms of the labour movement, such as organisational structures, institutional power dynamics, membership numbers and member characteristics. However, the strength and success of the labour movement are linked to its ability to evoke something greater than this – an idea that is enabling and mobilising: solidarity. The feeling of solidarity is what can elevate a situation – a meeting, making sandwiches, a rally – to another level, transforming it into an almost sacred experience, part of another world. Solidarity is also what can make the previously impossible suddenly appear within reach, which in turn can lead to a greater display of solidarity, further expanding the horizon of possibilities.

In this article I have argued that the formation of solidarity in the municipal workers’ strike enabled such a utopian expansion of the social imagination, based on the experience of not just enduring the situation at hand, but acting together to change it. The collective praxis prefigured visibility and agency for municipal workers. In that sense, strikes are not only expressions of solidarity and visions for a better working life, but also where solidarity and visions come into being. That makes the study of strike action an important and unique opportunity to explore collective power and utopias in the making, even when the formal outcome is not considered a victory by the workers. As Fantasia (2013) points out, collective action has a strong symbolic dimension; the display of solidarity doesn’t primarily show what a group is at a given time, but rather what it has the potential of becoming. Though temporary and fragile, cultures of solidarity thus still tell us something about the dynamics active in attempts to change labour relations and help us understand utopias not merely as wishful thinking, nor as abstract or theoretical constructions, but as social processes based in praxis.