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Czechoslovakia Trade Unions
In the 1980s, trade unions were the largest of all the
organizations. A single large federation, the Revolutionary Trade
Union Movement, represented most wage earners (80 percent in
1983); to deny someone trade union membership was to imply
extreme censure. The role of trade unions under communism is
distinctly different from the role it plays in Western society.
Under capitalism, unions represent the interests of workers
against their employers. When the state owns the means of
production, there is, theoretically, no such conflict; the unions
serve as a "school of socialism" for the membership, the goal
being to mobilize workers in pursuit of socialist production
goals.
During the reform era before 1968, party reformers and
workers alike criticized the Revolutionary Trade Movement as a
bureaucratically unwieldy organization that was dominated by
conservative party functionaries and served as a "conveyor belt"
for official labor policy. Workers typically wanted smaller, more
representative unions and a variety of economic benefits. More
disturbing to the authorities was workers' propensity to vote
party members out of union office and to demand a range of
reforms. These reforms were not calculated to allay the fears of
those who thought that the KSC's leading role was critical to
socialist development. Among the demands were the elimination of
party and police files on workers (workers often achieved this
end by simply burning the files) and the right of union and
management representatives (not party officials) to decide
personnel matters.
Even more disturbing to the authorities was the tendency for
workers' demands to be explicitly and unequivocally political. In
major industrial centers, workers called for political pluralism,
organized committees to defend freedom of the press, and voiced
their support for the "Two Thousand Words" manifesto
(see The Prague Spring, 1968
, ch. 1). The Writers' Union went so far as to
suggest that they would field a slate of candidates for the
National Assembly elections. It was not a turn of events
congenial to those who preferred Soviet-style socialism. Not
surprisingly, the unions were an early target of "normalization"
efforts. An estimated 20 to 50 percent of the leadership was
purged, and by the early 1970s the status quo had been
effectively restored.
Data as of August 1987
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