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In hospitals, the mobilisation of care is an integral part of white and blue collar work in a typically multi-dimensional space. Cooperative work is a springboard for day-to-day activity, linked to local spatial configurations, but the mobilisation of careworkers also includes a protest component. Focusing on collective work and on the strike in A&E, we show that careworker activism is neutralised as a result of a twofold contradiction between abstract and practical work: administrative work performed outside the walls and out of reach (at the Regional Health Agency) and union representation work disconnected from the field, together discourage day-to-day collective action by careworkers or the rise of national protest.