Solidarity is one of the rights mentioned as a central value in the preamble of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and it is the title of chapter IV which contains with Art. 27 (workers’ right to information and consultation within the undertaking) and Art. 28 (right of collective bargaining and action) central rights of collective labor law. The protection of the weaker party is the central idea, both in individual labor law and in collective labor law. But to which extent does that include the idea of solidarity? If solidarity would be the basic idea of the concept of collective labor law, this would imply a strong social approach. The following elaboration looks for an attempt of a definition and analyzes the components of solidarity in collective labor law based upon European and German Labor Law, bearing in mind provisions and jurisdiction on trade union rights, collective bargaining, the right to strike and on European and German works councils. Besides a legal analysis, sociological methodology is also applied, when the internal and external dimension of solidarity or the concept of inclusive and exclusive solidarity are presented.

This chapter, the volume’s Introduction, formulates central analytical and practical challenges posed by the effort to render the solidarity principle in concrete regulations, policies and legal outcomes, that is in “inscriptions of solidarity” in the terminology adopted here. Actors and institutions have often relied on the solidarity principle in their response to new challenges but that reliance poses as many new questions as it answers. Some of these questions are related to the fact that invocations of the solidarity principle have thus far largely failed to effectively reverse the tendency toward growing inequality. The chapter identifies not only positive elements of solidarity’s “inscriptions” but also challenges, especially those that involve enforceability and that partly reflect the frequent use of soft-law instruments in renderings of the solidarity principle. The chapter also explores the interactions – in application – between the principles of solidarity and equality, underscoring the usefulness of efforts to build synergies between those two legal framings or “labels” for initiatives designed to protect vulnerable sectors of the population, constructing an inclusive solidarity. In practice, actors have faced choices about how to frame policies that address crucial social needs.