„They Have a World to Win!“ Imagined Futures and Transnational Trade Union Mobilization in the Case of the European Service Directive

Utopias have played a central role in the history of the labor movement. Accordingly, many approaches have highlighted the meaning of symbolic reference frames for strategic coordination of political action. Drawing on the example of transnational trade union cooperation in the field of the Freedom of Services, the aspired contribution aims to point out the role of future images for political mobilization.

As a central challenge for trade unions in the course of European integration, focus is set on the Freedom of Services. Under conditions of institutional heterogeneity, the emergence of a common political line can by no means be taken for granted. Rather, differentials in national levels of wages and wealth open up incentives for workers from countries with lower standards to compete against workers from high-wage countries by intentionally undermining their respective standards via labor migration.

Based on field research in the respective countries, we show how trade unions from Sweden on one, and unions from Poland and Hungary on the other side were able to prevent such downward competition. Here, by plausibly convincing their Eastern European colleagues of a prospective convergence of wages over time, Swedish trade unions managed to craft a joint political line on the issue. This strategic orientation follows the idea of what has been widely acknowledged as the common totem of a ‘European Social Model’.