​European Solidarity beyond Law: Posted Workers as a Case Study

by Egle Dagilyte (Anglia Ruskin University)

Taking posted workers as a case study in the context of the Laval (2007) and Sähköalojen ammattiliitto (Finnish Electrical Workers’ Union) (2015) judgments, this paper analyses the concept of organic European solidarity – the idea that social cohesion forms because of the complex differentiated individual roles in the society, and not because of what the Court of Justice or the European legislators say that European solidarity should be. Thus, cross-border European solidarity arises because of social forces and not because of law: law only confirms the organic solidarity that grants legitimacy to legal norms. This article puts forward an argument that such organic European solidarity can only form bottom-up in cross-border situations where certain segments of society (e.g. posted workers and their trade unions in the host and the sending Member States) decide to collaborate and are able to see each other's interests as worth protecting. Support for this thesis comes from the empirical examples of collaborations between posted workers and local workers (and their trade unions), acting with the purpose to protect each other’s social rights, as indicated by research in industrial labour relations, social and public policy, and economic sociology. These examples indicate the potential, but also the fragility, of the bottom-up organic European social solidarity, which is quite telling of the future of European integration.
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Keywords: European solidarity, organic solidarity, posted workers, trade unions