Unionen, Sweden’s largest trade union, with more than 700,000 members at nearly 90,000 workplaces, has taken the everyday subject matter of collective agreement, to places workplace advertising rarely goes – the genre of cinema. Each of the campaign’s three films, created by Unionem with agency, Always Frank, and directed by Bacon director, Nalle Sjöblad, are cinema-worthy horror films condensed to thirty seconds.

“By moving working life to worlds where Unionen has never existed, it becomes clearer what the union actually adds,” stated Johan Blomström, creative director at Unionen. Each world is staged with full dramatic weight, right up until someone calmly brings up working conditions.”

In the lab, a scientist has found a way to save the Earth by sending her employee back in time to before the disaster struck, fully aware it could be fatal. Kenneth argues that deadly work is a no-go according to his union representative, and so is the unpaid overtime. He is met with “Good luck, Kenneth!” and a blinding flash of light.

In the second film, set in hell, the Devil arrives to find the damned, condemned to work for all eternity, on a tea break, having just signed a collective agreement with an occupational pension, five weeks’ holiday and a wellness hour. Unsurprisingly, it draws a weary eye-roll from their horned master.

And in a medieval castle, a newly crowned king rejects his throne as too unergonomic for sending people to the gallows, so the court hands it to his cousin, who once murdered his parents with a spoon, and promises him a cushion as a compromise.

The stakes are as high as each genre allows – from the end of the world to eternal damnation and a kingdom on the edge of revolt, while the objections are the most ordinary things imaginable – overtime, holiday, a chair that is bad for your back. Sjöblad has given every world the full cinematic treatment making each one feels lifted from a feature film. In Sweden, where “arbetsmiljö” or the work environment, is a matter of law and everyday conversation, the contrast lands instantly. “And of course,” Blomström added, “it’s more fun to talk about the work environment in hell than in yet another office.”

That contrast is also the argument. The films never explain what a collective agreement is; they show what working life looks like with one, and without it. Each closes on the line that gives the campaign its name: “All jobs need Unionen”.