 Forty-something, divorced Eila works as a cleaner for the Finnish government. When the cleaning business is privatized, her colleagues go on strike against impending redundancies but end up settling their dispute on questionable terms. Eila is despised as scab until a lawyer helps her -- and hundreds of her colleagues around the country -- file a winning lawsuit against the Finnish State. Subplots include a gentle but clueless musician boyfriend and Eila s son, a juvenile delinquent just released from prison and trying to cope with his own problems. Based on true events in the 1990s when cleaning women of the former National Building Board sued the Finnish government for illegal discharges.