The term “solidarity” seems to have fallen out of theoretical fashion despite the fact that it has a long history of describing the shared struggles of those oppressed by economic or political power structures. This conference aimed to explore the past, present and future of “solidarity at work” on both the conceptual and empirical level. Its focus was on the world of work, which it sought to investigate from a transnational perspective. Bringing together philosophers, sociologists and historians, the workshop questioned the various forms that solidarity as a concept and practice has taken since the beginning of the twentieth century.

The participants were invited to address the following questions: How have the concepts and categories of solidarity shaped labor and the labor movements of different countries? What about the divergent conceptual meanings and practices in these assorted contexts? How have power relations as well as people’s everyday life been changed by the various practices related to solidarity? How do technological and managerial changes help to shift the ideas and practices of solidarity? Do we see new forms emerging? Who are the agents of “solidarity at work” and what are the concrete mechanisms involved? More broadly, what are the levers and brakes of solidarity in the workplace today? These themes were explored throughout the conference along three axes. The first axis was the history of the concepts and categories of solidarity from a transnational perspective, the second was the past and present practices of solidarity at work, and the third was possible future forms of solidarity in the world of work.

“Solidarity” is a concept that is easy to caricature because of its abstractness. But there are also more concrete conceptions and categories of solidarity that guide social practices and are embedded and expressed in them. MARINE DHERMY-MAIRAL (Geneva) focused on the political program of the International Labour Organization (ILO), under direction of the former French Minister of Armaments Albert Thomas from 1919 to 1932, to turn the capitalist regime into one of “social justice.” This new “social economy” entailed creation of a new form of independence by building solidarity between rural farmers’ cooperatives and urban consumers’ cooperatives, which to this point had been regarded as discrete entities. Charles Gide’s concept of cooperatives as institutions suitable for supporting a form of solidarity between producers and consumers was given a broadly reformist rendering by Albert Thomas.

After these historical insights into the conceptual and practical work of the ILO to redefine solidarity at an international level, TUĞBA SEVINÇ (Istanbul) assumed a philosophical perspective in highlighting the dual nature of solidarity as both inclusive and exclusive. Focusing on different scales (workplace and society) and organizational forms of production (division of labor and joint activity), she argued that a critical reading of Durkheim and Marx helps delineate both a “harmonious” and “antagonistic” vision of solidarity.

JOHANNA MÜLLER (Munich/Berlin) and LEA-RICCARDA PRIX (Berlin) extended these thoughts from an intersectional perspective. Echoing the idea that solidarity develops by excluding other actors, they questioned the conditions pertaining to a transnational solidarity in work that requires a distancing of oneself from a purely economic conception of work and taking into account a moral aspect wherein organic solidarity functions as a social bond by promoting the notion that individuals are part of a larger context.

From a sociological-theoretical perspective – and mirroring the previous presentations – HEINZ BUDE (Kassel) suggested that we distance ourselves from both the Marxist approach to solidarity as a struggle and from the legacy of Émile Durkheim and Léon Bourgeois of solidarity as the expression of a debt that individuals pay to society. For Bude, the concept of solidarity emerges from a need for protection. Unlike empathy, which requires interpersonal understanding, or justice, which is bound to the question of “what is one entitled to do,” solidarity appears to be a shared consciousness of vulnerability which can sustain a renewed leftist political program.

Subsequent to the conceptual approaches of solidarity proposed during the first panel, the second panel analyzed past and present categories of solidarity at work in practice and in different socio-historical contexts so as to see the various interpretations at stake. Historian LASSE HEERTEN (Bochum) analyzed the strikes in Hamburg in 1906, as the city was not only a center of the globalized economy but of the workers’ movement. Shipping companies used strikebreakers from different parts of Germany and Great-Britain and thus participated in a globalization of the working class. The newspapers and flyers produced by unionists show how dehumanization of the strikebreakers through racial and chauvinist epithets served to challenge the idea of workers being part of an “imagined community” transnationally united by solidarity.

Exploring a step further the racial limits of worker solidarity, ANDREAS ECKERT (Berlin) focused on forms of solidarity in South Africa from the 1960s to the 1980s during the apartheid regime. As collective bargaining was conducted solely by white men, huge strikes involving thousands of people gathered both whites and blacks. Eckert argued that such a movement cannot be understood without taking race and gender into account, for in the black movement it was women working in the textile factories who played a critical role “at the shopfloor level.”

JULIA WAMBACH (Berlin) also felt it necessary to integrate gendered and racial categorizations into any analysis so as to comprehend solidarity as both inclusion and exclusion. Focusing on de-industrialized regions in France and Germany, she explored the special bonds between soccer teams and mine workers as helping to produce both masculine and working-class identity and solidarity. The continuity from a form of solidarity based on work to another based on leisure is reflected in symbols and images of “hard work” and a sense of belonging, thus throwing into question the possible discrepancy between solidarity as advertised and real practices.

This is what PANCHALI RAY (New Delhi) also tackled in an ethnographic study on female health-care workers in contemporary Kolkata and their lack of trade-union participation.1 She argued that gender produced subjectivities, in that case as they are shaped by the experience of sanctions in the workplace, discourage women from joining a trade union despite their fitting political views.

In the last panel the participants were invited to reflect on emergent and future forms of solidarity at work such as digitally equipped forms of work, the managerial promotion of competition between workers in the same workplace, and freelance workers coping with “coopetition.” In a world of work that is increasingly fragmented according to many commentators, digital technologies disrupt the traditional workplace and hence undermine the social ties among co-workers. But we also see new forms of solidarity in play there.

Based on the empirical research that she conducted in three major banks in Nigeria with a focus on female employees, SCHOLASTICA NGOZI ATATA (Ibadan/Abeokuta) linked the managerial expectations of having fulfilled a quantified deposit every day with a process of “de-solidarity.” Digitally equipped tasks related to marketing strategies tend to enclose the workers in solitary tasks and deter cooperation.

However, among distant freelance translators, KATERYNA NOVIKOVA (Warsaw) argued that social media platforms play a different role since they enable the sharing of knowledge, moral support and a better understanding of the profession. Whereas “coopetition” has been regarded as the form of cooperation specific to such workers, by observing the online community we gain a glimpse of possibly new forms of solidarity based on support and everyday help.

In a utopian, speculative approach, FRANCESCO LARUFFA (Geneva) considered the form which post-neoliberal social citizenship might take. This renewed conception – encapsulating freedom to work and purposefulness of work – could be supported by the valorization of care work and be enlarged to a global “practice of taking care of the world” while paving the way to new forms of international solidarity.

BLANCHE SEGRESTIN (Paris) discussed how law and management studies are rethinking the concept of the firm so as to integrate social objectives. By overcoming the traditional grammar of production – namely capital and labor – the new legal category of entreprise à mission (purpose-driven company) that was newly implemented in France in 2019 could frame two new forms of workplace solidarity. Firstly through the “common purpose” and commitment to a desirable future that justify the creation of such companies and constrain the board to take decisions accordingly; and secondly the encouragement of prévoyance (foresight) as a way of assuming risks collectively.

As it emerged during the conference, solidarity can be addressed by social and historical sciences and philosophy as both a desirable type of social interaction and an observable phenomenon. Since the early twentieth century, from a theoretical standpoint, solidarity has referred to a form of resistance to the consequences of capitalism, whereas practically speaking it is an alternative and responsive form of cooperation to ever intensifying competition. However, intersectional theorists and transnational historians have shown that solidarity appears among certain types of workers who share recognizable identities. For instance those excluded from the interactions created by solidarity are firstly women and racialized people. In contemporary digitalized societies, “coopetition” or the expression of moral support or knowledge-sharing are emblematic of new forms of solidarity, while the notion itself tends not to be verbally articulated by the actors.

Throughout the conference it was clear that solidarity as a practice becomes all the more difficult to define, clarify and observe as the world of work becomes more fragmented and disintegrated. A deeper inquiry into practices of solidarity by unions through the lens of intersectionality also clearly reveals the dual nature of solidarity as both inclusive and exclusive. Whereas the Western model of the welfare state has promoted a vision of solidarity as a form of debt, everyday help and support between individuals in the workplace takes many forms. Yet empirical research investigating different groups of workers across the world with regard to legal frames, actors’ discourses and skills is still needed in order to inquire as to whether solidarity at work should not be assimilated as a gift that is exchanged, or as a common good, or so as to draw clearer lines between social movement and solidarity.

Conference overview:

Panel 1: The History of the Concepts, Conceptions and Categories of Solidarity from a Transnational Perspective

Chair: Bénédicte Zimmermann (EHESS, Paris / Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin)

Marine Dhermy-Mairal (University of Geneva): Solidarity in the International Trade Market? Albert Thomas’ Revolutionary Project and Its Intellectual Background (1919-1932)

Tuğba Sevinç (Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul): Solidarity Through Work: Harmonious and Antagonistic Visions

Johanna M. Müller (Technische Universität München / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and Lea-Riccarda Prix (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): Solidarity in Disparity: Rethinking the “Social Question” in the 21st Century

Heinz Bude (Universität Kassel): Solidarity as an Existential Issue

Panel 2: Past and Present Practices of Solidarity at Work

Chair: Sasha Disko (Technische Universität Berlin / Hamburg)

Lasse Heerten (Ruhr Universität Bochum): Solidarity: Tie/Break – Labor Conflict in the Port of Hamburg and the Working Class as a Transnational Community, 1906/07

Andreas Eckert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): Shopfloor and Segregation: Practices of Work Solidarity in Apartheid South Africa, 1960s-1980s

Julia Wambach (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin): The End of Solidarity? Deindustrialization in Germany and France 1960-2000

Panchali Ray (HomeNet South Asian, New Delhi): Thinking Through “Solidarity” from a Feminist Perspective: A Case Study of the Health Care Givers in Contemporary Kolkata, India

Panel 3: Futures of Solidarity at Work

Chair: Lisa Herzog (University of Groningen)

Scholastica Ngozi Atata (University of Ibadan / Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta): Marketing Strategies, Female Bankers and Solidarity at Work in Lagos, Nigeria

Kateryna Novikova (Warsaw University of Life Sciences): Solidarity Through Knowledge Sharing? The Case of Freelance Translators’ Practices of Digital Coopetition

Francesco Laruffa (University of Geneva): Re-Politicizing the Meaning of Work: The Future of Work-Based Social Solidarity?

Blanche Segrestin (Mines Paris Tech): When Unknown Futures Call for New Forms of Solidarity at Work: Theoretical Stakes and Legal Forms

Note:
1 Panchali Ray, Politics of Precarity: Gendered Subjects and the Health Care Industry in Contemporary Kolkat, Oxford 2019.