University of Glasgow

Works Councils in Czechoslovakia, 1945-47

Author(s): Karel Kovanda
Source: Soviet Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 255-269
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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SOVIET

STUDIES,

vol. XXIX, no.

2,

April 1977, pp. 255-69.

WORKS COUNCILS IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA,

1945-47

By KAREL KOVANDA
INVESTIGATIONS of

the

immediate

post-World

War

II

period

in

Czechoslovakia frequently focus on the political struggle between the

Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC) and its opponents to the right of
the political spectrum. The period was also, however, marked by an
intensive campaign of the KSC to gain overall control of all political
institutions of the working class; and in this effort the KSC was in
competition with political tendencies of the left. This struggle ended in
1948 with the Social Democratic Party merging with the KSC. Its
beginnings, however, date back to the immediate postwar weeks and
months, when the KSC strove to control the network of works councils
that emerged at the time.
While observers and students of the period have pointed out that the
KSC acquired control over the works councils,- a detailed examination
of the mechanism through which this was achieved has been lacking.
Such an examination is of an interest limited not only to the historian
of that particular period in history. The model of the councils was
frequently invoked during the reform movement of 1968 which
attempted to introduce democracy within the factory walls as well. One
might legitimately wonder what was it about the immediate postwar
experience that the reformers of 1968 thought applicable 20 years later.
But there is yet more. The story of the works councils of I945-47 is a
chapter in the process through which a strong Leninist Communist
Party prepared conditions for an eventual takeover, after which it
jettisoned the outward trappings of democratic procedure. Studying
the mechanisms employed by the KSC to gain control of the workers of
postwar Czechoslovakia might invite meaningful comparisons with,
for example, the mechanism used by the Communist Party to try and
gain control over the workers in post-dictatorship Portugal. Interesting
though it would be, this comparison is, nevertheless, beyond the scope
of this article.
1 Cf. e.g. V. Chalupa, Rise and Development of a Totalitarian State (Leiden, 1959),
p. o9; Josef Korbel, The CommunistSubversion of Czechoslovakia, I938-I948 (Princeton,
1958), who calls them 'factory councils', pp. 150, 90o; or Hubert Ripka, Czechoslovakia
Enslaved (London, 1950), who calls them 'unit committees'.

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256

WORKS COUNCILS

Workers' councils were first created in Czechoslovakia during the

revolutionary wave that swept Central Europe in the aftermath of
World War I.2 By I920 and 1921, this wave had been checked by the

bourgeois regimes that emerged victorious out of the turmoil. Nevertheless, councils, divested of their revolutionary content if not rendered
completely impotent, remained as a permanent feature in labour
legislation of several European countries.
In February 1920 the fledgling Czechoslovak Republic enacted socalled works councils (zdvodni rady) in the mining industry. They had
relatively strong powers in all matters touching on conditions of work
and employment. General management questions in mines were decided
byjoint councilsin which both management and miners were represented.
In August I921 another Act provided for works committees (zdvodni
v35bory)in all firms in other industries which had 30 or more employees.
By then, however, the revolutionary tide had ebbed even further, and
the rights of works committees were far weaker than those of works
councils in mining. Other than in mining, there were no provisions for
direct worker participation in management.3
A factor that weakened the power of prewar works committees even
further was the extraordinary fragmentation of the Czechoslovak labour
movement: in 1937 a total of i8 national labour federations were
operating in the country, as well as numerous other independent unions.4
During World War II labour leaders anticipated that in postwar Czechoslovakia a single strong labour movement would emerge. This vision was
shared by labour leaders of different political leanings, both communist
and non-communist, both in the country and in wartime exile. They
generally preferred a single labour movement representing the class
interests of workers as a whole and transcending the narrow political
partisanship which before the war had kept the labour movement
fragmented.5
The new organization of labour that eventually did emerge after the
war was called the Revolutionary Labour Movement (Revolucni
2 A detailed work about Czechoslovakia is
lacking, but cf. the following specialized
essays: Jaroslav Sykora, 'Delnicke rady na jihoza-padni Morave', Sbornik Matice
mioravske, I96I, no. 80, pp. 64-85; Josef Kolejka, DMlnickerady na Hornimz Slezskuz
(Ostrava, I960); id., Revolticni delnicke hnuti na Morave a ve Slezsku, 1917-1921
I957).
(Prague,
a For details cf. Labor Legislation in Czechoslovak Mining Industry (London, 1944);
Esther Bloss, Labor Legislation in Czechoslovakia (New York, I938), esp.pp. 35-9.
4 For a list of prewar labour federations and membership data, cf. Antonin
Zapotocky, Nova odborovdpolitika (Prague, 1949), p. I93n.
For wartime ideas about unity of labour, cf. Stanislav Zaimecnik, '13RO a ceske
Kvetnove povstani v roce I945', in Odbory a nase revoluce (Prague, I968), pp. 9-47;
Vladimir Pachman, 'Cesta k jednotnym odborum', in ROH pri vjstavbe socialismi
(Prague, 1965), pp. 9-32; for these ideas in Slovakia cf. e.g. Ivan Skurlo, 'Zrod a
pocatky jednotneho odboroveho hnuti: na Slovensku', ibid. pp.33-65; among labour
leaders in London exile, 'Dokumenty k historii z-apasu 'o jednotu cs. odboroveho
hnuti', Odbory a spolecnost, 1968, no. 4, pp. 63-77.

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IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

257
odborove hnuti-ROH). As anticipated, the ROH was indeed the only
labour movement that would exist; but, contrary to the expectations of
many, it soon fell under the complete control of the Communist Party,
rather than being non-partisan and independent of party politics.
In the first postwar days and weeks the ROH consisted of two quite
disjoint organizational levels. At the very top it had a national leadership:
the Central Labour Council (Ustredni rada odboruf-RO).
TVROhad
been formed already during the last phase of the war, as a clandestine
opposition caucus operating in the very centre of the Nazi-sponsored
official labour union.6 Political parties of the postwar coalition recognized
JRO as the top organ of organized labour on the basis of its wartime
record, and its composition was not determined by any election process.
Most of the original members of JRO were Social Democrats and
National Socialists, but in the early postwar days a number of communist labour leaders were 'co-opted'. On 7 June 1945 Antonin
Zapotocky, the veteran communist leader, was selected for the top post
of ISRO Chairman. The strong KSC representation in IORO reflected
the postwar prestige of the communists and their dominant role in the
coalition government, rather than the prewar strength of communist
labour unions which had in fact been quite modest. In URO the
communist caucus quite naturally followed the KSQ line. The question
of dual loyalty, of KSC interests possibly conflicting with interests of
organized labour, never arose. However, the sympathies that the Communist Party enjoyed after the war nourished naive expectations of
many non-communist unionists that for their communist colleagues the
interests of labour would also always come first.
At the opposite end of its organizational hierarchy, the ROH consisted
of works councils. During the last days of the war, when the Prague
Uprising erupted, OIROappealed to all workers to 'convene meetings of
blue-collar and white-collar workers, except for collaborators and
reactionary elements', and to 'select revolutionary works councils which
shall exercise control over production and management of the factories'.7
While the fighting lasted, councils were to hold and protect the industrial
plants; but during the first days of peace they became involved in
organizing production and in controlling management.
An important IRO directive of 12 May I9458 characterized the works
councils as 'the basic organizational units of the ROH'. The important
point is that they-were elected by all workers in a given firm, with the
expectation that the most talented people, irrespective of their political
6

For an excellent discussion of the wartime origins of ROH see Zaimecnik, op. cit.
Cf. Karel Rfuzicka, ROH v boji o rozsifeni moci delnicke tHdy (1945-I948) (Prague,
I963), p..26. In spring 1945 labour leaders in London appealed for the forming of
4united secret workers' committees'; cf. Viera Jarosova et al., Odbory na ceste k
8 Reproduced in Ruic2ika, op. cit., pp. 292-4.
Februdru (Bratislava, I967), p. 9.
7

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WORKS COUNCILS

258

affiliation, would be elected. Communists were, of course, well represented among council-members, but the KSC had no say in their
election and, once elected, these party members would often choose to
act in the best interests of their constituents rather than to follow blindly
the orders of the KSC. After all, these were still the unmistakably
democratic days of I945. The control that the KSC: exercised over the
councils was thus far short of complete, although such control was
imperative for the KSC to establish its hegemony over the working class.
Before examining KSC tactics with respect to works councils, it will
be appropriate to survey the range of practical activities the councils
were involved with. The above-mentioned I1RO directive of 12 May
outlined their tasks quite broadly:
Works councils are called upon to control the production and the
management

of enterprises

. . . and to defend and represent the

economic, social, and cultural interests of the employees.

The councils were entitled to have access to all books and other files
of the firm, to request detailed reports from management about production and sales, and to review management production plans. Councils
were supposed to supervise management, and not to get involved with
managerial day-to-day operational responsibilities. Nor did they have
the right to enforce changes when they found management practices
questionable: in such instances, councils were to inform higher ROH
authorities and leave it to them to seek redress.9 In practice, however,
councils frequently went much further and sought to stretch their
powers to control as far as possible.
Even more important perhaps than the councils' rights of control over
management was the influence they had in deciding who the management
would be, and indeed even matters of ownership of individual firms.
These issues were in considerable flux at the time. As the war ended,
the economy was technically in private ownership. A consensus had
emerged during the war, however, calling for major postwar steps
towards democratizing the economy. These would result in considerably
amplifying the degree of control exercised by the state as well as by
the workers, and even in nationalizing certain industries. A system of
mixed economy would have ensued.
As a first step in this process of 'democratizing' the economy,10 the
property of Germans and Hungarians-who were being expelled-and
of local traitors and collaborators was confiscated, in what was described
9 Cf. Vaclav Vrabec, 'ROH a znarodneni', in Odbory a nase revoluce, pp. 129-68.
For a discussion of the concept, cf. e.g. Karel Kaplan, 'Hospodiaska demokracie
v letech I945-1948', in Oeskoslovenskycasopis historickfy,i966, no. 14, pp. 844-6i, and
especially his Zndrodneni a socialismus (Prague, 1968).
10

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IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

259

as a 'national purge' (ndrodni ocista).l The coalition government agreed

upon this measure in the so-called Kosice Government Programme of
April 1945. Confiscated firms-and many others, too-were put under
state control, described as 'national administration' (ndrodni sprava).
They were to remain under 'national administration' until their final
disposition was decided.
Works councils played a prominent role in setting up the system of
national administration. They prepared slates of suitable candidates to
serve as 'national administrators', i.e. managers, which were then
submitted to state authorities for approval. This was routinely granted.12
Councils thus executed considerable control, at least initially, over
management personnel appointments. Also, they had a major influence
over the very scope of firms that would be subject to national administration. According to the Presidential Decree that enacted the measure,3l
it was to affect property of owners who had been 'purged', and furthermore key industries, extraction of raw materials, and insurance
companies. Also affected, however, were to be firms whose owners'
'antagonistic attitude' to employees obstructed regular production. This
turned out to be a very flexible stipulation; and militant workers,
headed by their works councils, were frequently ready to resort to
strikes so that their particular firm could be included among the statecontrolled ones.14
The net result was this: in the summer of 1945, national administrations were functioning in more than Io,ooo factories, including 45% of
all industrial enterprises in the Czech lands (data for Slovakia are
unavailable), and involving almost one million workers-about 75% of
all workers in industry.15
The 'national purge' with confiscation of property and the 'national
administration' management did not resolve the question of ownership.
For long weeks and months it remained unclear what would eventually
happen to these firms. During this time, throughout the summer of
1945, there was an ever stronger demand to settle their status through
11 The conductof the purge,still an untouchedtopic for contemporaryCzechoslovak
historians,has been sharply criticized by many. For some less-known views, see Jiri
Veltrusky,'Za co bude souzen Arno Hais?', in Cil, I947, no. Io, and id., 'Ocista,ktera
nebyla jeste provedena',ibid., 1947, no. I9. For sample directivesfor conductingthe
purge, cf. e.g. Budovdnz jednotn3ychodboru 1944-r946

(Prague, 1965), pp. 56-57.

For fascinating details concerning the political affiliation of newly appointed

managers-national administrators-cf. Milos Klimes and Marcel Zachoval,
'Prispevek k problematice unorovvch udalosti', Ceskoslovenskycasopis historicky,
12

1958, no. 6, p. i98n.

13 The Decree was
signed on I9 May I945. National administrationswere being

formed earlier in some cases: all mines in the Ostravaregion had them by Io May
(Vrabec, op. cit., p. I4I).
14

For a fairly detailedreview of a case in point, the Zaitkafoodstuffsfirm in Ceske

Budejovice, cf. Riuicka, op. cit., pp. 78, i5Iff, i65.

15 Ladislav Urban, Otdzky ndrodnia demokraticke

revolucev CSR (Prague, x955),
p. 266, and Vrabec, op. cit.

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WORKS COUNCILS

260

nationalization.16The two most radical segments of the working class,

the works councils and the Social Democratic Party, were the most
emphatic in calling for nationalization. The policy of the Communist
Party was, by contrast, for a relatively long time one of evasiveness and
procrastination.7

But by mid-July even the Communist Party decided to endorse the

idea of nationalization publicly. Once the principle of nationalization
was accepted, further discussions concerned its scope. Open questions
remained as to which particular industries and what size firms would be
iffected, and how fast to proceed. The government draft proposals were
published in August,18 but in the weeks that followed workers in entire
industries that had been 'left out' demanded that their industries be
nationalized too.l9 Works councils again pressed for nationalizing as
much industry as possible, just as a few months earlier they had pressed
for as broad a scope as possible for 'national administration'.
The campaign for nationalization lingered on long into the autumn.
Only on 24 October 1945 did President Benes sign four nationalization
decrees. Together, they affected 2,230 firms in 30 different industries,
including a large segment of foodstuffs, banking and insurance. They
covered 75-80% of the country's industrial capacity employing over
60% of all employees in industry.20
The campaign provided the most obvious testimony to the fact that
works councils were functioning as an independent political force, as a
pressure group affecting the more traditional political organisms of the
country-political parties and the government.21 The main contours of
the works councils' activities coincided with the general goals of the
Communist Party, at least as far as changing the economic power
structure of the country was concerned. It is not surprising that
adversaries of the KSC, especially in the bourgeois democratic parties,
16 The best workon the subjectof nationalizationis Kaplan,Zndrodneni
a socialismus.

17 For the Communist Party, the question for a long time stood as that of 'the
characterof the revolution'. Was it 'national and democratic',directed against the
Nazis and their allies, or 'socialist',directedalso againstthe home bourgeoisie?In line
with Moscow and Cominternpolicy of the time, the KSC for a long time advocated
the first line, to the point of alienatingsegments of the working class who, right from
the end of the war,had been callingfor implementingsocialistchanges.For the position
of the KSC and of other political partieson nationalization,cf. Kaplan, Zndrodnenia
socialismus,pp. IIff, and Vrabec, op. cit.
18 Bohumil Lausman,the Social DemocraticMinister of Industry, presentedthem
at a Conferenceof PragueWorksCouncilson 23 August.
19 Such was the case with distilleries,leather and rubber industries, confectionery,
sugar refineries (Rfiuicka, op. cit., pp. 57-58, 65-66), chemical, pharmaceutical, paper
and gramophone industries (Vrabec, op. cit., p. I57).
20 Jaroslav Opat, O novou demokracii I945-1948 (Prague, I966), p. II6; Kaplan,

Zndrodnenia socialismus,p. 238n.

21 For an analysis of the postwar political arena, cf. Karel Kaplan, 'Odbory v
mechanismulidove demokratickemoci v letech I945-1948', in Odborya nase revoluce,
PP. 94-I98.

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IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

26I

saw no difference between them, and considered councils as perhaps a

front organization for the KSC. However, despite the closeness of
policies, works councils were independent of the KSC. There were
differences in tactics between the two political forces, with works
councils generally adopting a more radical position than the KSC. It
would be incorrect to ignore this.
The central problem for the Communist Party was that of bringing
works councils under its own tight control. The KSC achieved this in
a series of steps which together amounted to harnessing works councils
within the organizational structure of the ROH, and introducing
democratic centralism into the labour movement.
The first step involved introducinga rival hierarchy within the ROH.
It will be recalled that, originally, works councils were to serve as the
basic building blocks of the ROH. However, since councils were elected
by all workers, the Communist Party was quick to denounce this
approach as 'syndicalism'.22 Instead, the KSC insisted that the ROH
consist of a voluntary, dues-paying membership organized in hypothetical 'ROH locals' (odboroveskupiny) which would elect their leadership, 'works committees' (zdvodni v5bory). These ROH locals would
then form the base for a territorial pyramid whose apex at the national
level already existed: namely, PRO, the Central Labour Council, by
now under firm KSC control. In fact, as soon as communists won
control of it, IRO launched a vigorous campaign to create these
newfangled ROH locals.23
The process of establishing ROH locals and works committees was
not easy. The idea met with the indifference if not outright opposition
of many workers who could not understand why so much pressure and
attention was being devoted to purely organizational matters, and why
the popular works councils were not a sufficient and satisfactory vehicle
for organizing labour. Antonin Zapotocky, the communist PTRO
Chairman, openly admitted in August I945 that ROH locals had not
yet been established in many factories, meetings were not being held,
works committees were not being elected.24 He attributed the slow
formation of ROH locals to the 'lack of experience' of many labour
leaders who 'had not graduated from the practical school of the old
labour movement'.
22 In
particular, labour leaders associated with the Social Democratic Party advocated
ideas described in this manner. Ruficka, op. cit., pp. 44-45, pays considerable attention
to one of them, Jiri Veltruskv. In a personal interview, Veltrusk? explained that
Ruzicka's rendering of his ideas is completely false, based on a fabricated police report.
For more views on syndicalism, see Pachman, op. cit., p. 20.
23
Cf. e.g. URO statement of 13 June 1945 in Zapotockv, op. cit., pp. 9- I.
24
Workers' attitudes to works councils and ROH locals are discussed also in
Zdenek Snitil, 'l1loha jednotnvch odboru pfi pHprave dvouletky', in Odbory a nase
revoluce, pp. I69-208, especially p. 174.

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WVORKSCOUNCILS

262

'That is why new labour activists prefer the works councils, and
consider them more suitable for union activity than ROH locals.'
However, efforts to substitute works councils for ROH locals were
incorrect, he declared, because such efforts would turn works councils
into 'a leading force of the labour movement' which, as goes without
saying, was reserved for the Communist Party.
A certain rivalry thus developed between the works councils,
representing all workers, and the ROH locals with their own elected
works committees. (The similar terminology, and the connotations of a
rather impotent organ that the name 'works committee' carried from
before the war, did not help to reduce the ensuing confusion.) The
communists insisted that democratic centralism be universally introduced throughout the ROH, and this provision was indeed written into
the ROH statutes, approved at the First ROH Congress in April 1946.
With the introduction of democratic centralism, communist control
over TRO, the top organ of the ROH, in and of itself sufficed for
controlling the entire organization: one of the principles of democratic
centralism is, of course, that lower organs carry out decisions of higher
organs. In addition, all communists in every position in the ROH were
organized in KSC caucuses (stranicke skupiny), and were obliged to
follow the party line as a matter of party discipline. The impact of these
KSC caucuses were further enhanced by the fact that other political
parties for a long time refrained from organizing their own followers
within the labour movement: they were taking the original idea of a
non-partisan ROH in earnest.
ROH locals thus functioned on the grass-root level as a network
parallel with works councils. If the KSC could not gain direct control
over the latter, it would gain control indirectly. In the next step, works
councils would be directly subordinated to their rivals, the ROH locals.
This was accomplished through regulations governing works council
elections. They deserve a little elaboration.
During the first months of their existence, works councils operated
in a legal vacuum. They were exercising considerable power which,
however, had no legal basis. Their unchecked activity was a source of no
minor anxiety, especially among bourgeois democratic politicians who
insisted that the councils be legalized and their powers clearly delimited.
Consequently, President Benes signed a Works Councils Decree in
October 1945, together with the measures enacting nationalization.25
Apart from prescribing the scope of works councils' activity which we
shall deal with later, the Decree also stipulated the way in which councils
were to be elected. Works councils were also no longer described as 'the
basic organs and representatives' of the ROH. The role of the building
25

Presidential Decree No. 104/I945

Sb., on Works and Enterprise Councils.

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IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

263

blocks of the labour movement was now reserved exclusively for the
ROH locals. Even more important, though, ROH locals now had
absolute control over elections to works councils. The new decree put
them in charge of technically organizing the ballot, but also of drafting
a list of candidates. In fact, the ROH local was declared the only body
authorized to prepare and submit such a list.
The election rules were quite unusual. They stipulated that i) the
slate prepared by the ROH local would offer no choice of candidates,
and workers would vote en bloc for or against it; 2) to be elected, the slate
would have to win the extremely high share of 80% of votes cast; 3)
should it fail to win that 80%, a second ballot would follow, but, if the
vote remained inconclusive even then, the place of the works council
would be taken by a 'substitute body' (nahradni organ) nominated again
by none other than the ROH local.
This extraordinary set of rules resulted from complicated backstage
manoeuvring of the country's political parties represented in the
government, and of VtRO. They represented a compromise of sorts
between an original proposal presented by t-RO, and a counterproposal of bourgeois democratic parties. The 'compromise' was such,
however, that it suited the ends of the KSC and of IJRO even more
than their original proposal would have.26
Under these circumstances, works council elections lost any significance they might have had otherwise. With the ROH having complete
control over the selection of candidates, the actual elections were for all
practical purposes reduced to a popularity poll for the communistcontrolled ROH. And if 80% of voting workers were not in favour of the
ROH-dictated slate of works council candidates, it did not matter either:
the 'substitute body', composed most frequently of the selfsame
candidates, would take over even without being endorsed by the
elections. One way or another, the ROH local would prevail.
The Works Councils Decree with its election provisions was signed in
26
These curious rules call for some explanation. In their original form, this set of
rules was presented by non-communist members of the government who feared that
choice among candidates, and a two third majority to get the candidates elected (which
tiRO had originally proposed), would only further strengthen the positions of the
KSQ in factories-as long as the selection of candidates was left exclusively in the hands
of the communist-controlled ROH locals. The counter-proposal of these ministers
called for a single slate of candidates, 80% majority for election, and-cruciallyindefinite balloting, until a suitable slate of candidates was found, such as could win the
necessary 8o% of the vote.
In this way, they sought to control the pre-election bargaining process of picking
the slate, safeguarding themselves thereby against being totally wiped out in the
election. In subsequent negotiations the KSC and URO accepted the bulk of their
proposal-with one crucial change: that the balloting should not continue indefinitely,
but only for two rounds. But that was the linchpin of the whole design which then
completely collapsed: the election rules that were finally approved were less democratic
than any of the original proposals. For the non-communist parties, this 'compromise'
spelled an. unmitigated. disaster.

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WORKS COUNCILS
264
October 1945, but the issue of elections remained a bone of contention
for another whole year. As the communist design became clear, the
demand for proportional representation appeared, especially among
some Social Democratic labour leaders, but to no avail.27 Detailed
instructions for the voting procedure that were to follow the Works
Councils Decree were in fact not issued until November I946,28and the
elections themselves were held only in the first quarter of g947.
When the elections were finally held, their most prominent feature
was high absenteeism. Indifference and passivity were especially high
among politically unorganized workers who formed two-thirds of ROH
membership, and whose proportion among all workers was probably
even higher. Absenteeism in turn, made it easier to elect the councils.
With unorganized workers staying away, it was easier for the KS(, to
mobilize its own followers and to gather the necessary 80% majority of
voting workers. As mentioned above, to vote against the slate of
candidates was an exercise in futility: the hand-picked candidates
would in the end form either the works council or the 'substitute body',
amounting to the same thing. Since there was no effective way to elect
anybody other than those whom the ROH local had selected, the
significance of voting against the slate was limited to that of a protest
vote.
Nevertheless, despite this futility, a consistent and significant pattern
emerged: the stronger the industrial environment in which the ballot
was held, the stronger the protest vote; that is, the more difficult it was
to rally the necessary 80% of votes.
As Table I indicates, 70% of all works councils were successfully
elected on first ballot, nationally.29In industrial regions of the country,
though, this number was 64%. (Only one region, Kladno, even reached
the national average of 70%. It will be noted that Kladno had had an
especially strong communist tradition.) Less industrialized regions, by
contrast, averaged 77%. (The low 57% of the Olomouc region might be
attributable to the strong influence of the Catholic-oriented People's
Party in the area. Olomouc itself is the seat of an archbishopric.)
In addition, breaking down firms by size (Table 2) reveals a compatible pattern: the more employees in a firm, the smaller the chances
that the works council would be elected. In fact, only in one factory with
more than 3,o00 employees was the council elected on first ballot.
These results are unambiguous. The protest vote, which consistently
increased with the strength of the industrial environment, appears to
27

Cf. e.g. Ruiic6ka, op. cit., p. 184.

Government Ordinance No. 216/I946 Sb.
Tables I and 2 are after Rfizicka, op. cit., pp. I88-90. As for the size of the protest
vote increasing with the size of the factory, it should also be mentioned that in large
factories non-communist parties were more likely to have their own factory chapters.
28
29

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IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

265
TABLE I

NUMBER

OF ELECTIONS TO WORKS COUNCILS AND NUMBER OF COUNCILS

ON FIRST BALLOT, BY REGIONS OF THE CZEcH LANDS, PRIOR TO

ELECTED

30 MAY 1947
No. of
elections

Region
Praha
Brno
Ostrava
Plzeni
Most
Liberec
O3stin.L.
Kladno
Industrial Regions
Jihlava
Hradec Kralove
Karlovy Vary
Kolin
Mladi Boleslav
Olomouc
Pardubice
Sumperk
Tabor
Zlin
Znojmo
Ceske Budejovice
Less Industrial Regions
National Total

No. of councils
elected in first ballot

1,358
900
585
358
379
213
338
288

854
592
313
244
257
145
222
201

63
66
59
69
67
68
66
70

4,4I9

2,828

64

I85
448
261
465
423
407
383

138
402
205
347
352
233
257
87

3,751

215
31
195
2,881

75
90
79
75
83
57
67
70
74
77
72
75
77

8,170

5,709

70

124

297
280
43
26i

207

TABLE 2
NUMBER

OF ELECTIONS TO WORKS COUNCILS AND NUMBER OF COUNCILS

ELECTED ON FIRST BALLOT, BY SIZE OF FIRM, PRIOR TO

I MAY

Size of firm, in
no. of employees
less than Ioo
100-500
500-I,000

I,00o-3,000
over 3,000
Total

947

No. of
elections

No. of councils
elected on first ballot

5,400
1,998

4,103
I,I45

76
57

224

io8
I4
7,774

I2

32
1
5,393

44

30
7
69

reflect the attitude of workers to ROH-controlled works councils more

faithfully than the absolute number of positive votes. The workers were
well aware that councils were turning into another pawn in the game of
the Communist Party.

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266

WORKS COUNCILS

The Works Councils Decree of October 1945 legalized the existence

of the councils but at the same time specified more carefully what their
powers would be. In particular, the Decree sought to curb the councils'
continuous endeavours to interfere with daily operational tasks of the
management. It read in part:
Running a firm shall be the concern of its managing staff which shall
have the sole responsibility for the firm and for its success. [The
works councils] shall not have the right to interfere with the management and with the operation of the firm by issuing independent
orders.
Instead, the councils' activities were to focus on maintaining a degree of
supervision, or democratic control, over management, with respect to
heeding both 'common economic interests' of the society and the
legitimate 'economic, social, health and cultural interests of the
employees'. The first of these tasks was novel and could be used against
workers: steps that the government or the management would take
against workers' interests would be simply described as being in the
(presumably higher) interests of 'society', and thus unobjectionable.
The works councils' right of co-decision in all questions of working
conditions and of hiring, firing and transfers was recognized, as well as
their right to administer schemes promoting employees' welfare. For
these purposes, councils were entitled to a share, of not less than io%,
in the profits of the firm.
In order to accomplish their supervisory role, councils had the power
of consultation in drafting trade and production plans, and the power of
control over their execution, as well as over the general administration
of the firm. Works councils could present recommendations and
suggestions to management. If these were not dealt with satisfactorily,
redress could be sought from 'competent public authorities'.
Management, in turn, was obliged to discuss with the council all
general personnel questions, in advance, and to provide it with duplicates
of labour contracts. An 'authorized member' of the council was to have
access to all books, but the effectiveness of this measure for bringing
pressure on management was severely limited: the Decree proscribed
divulging 'manufacturing, trade, or operating secrets of the firm', which
in itself was an offence explicitly sufficient for impeaching a council
member. Members also had access to all management meetings but
without voting rights.
The rights awarded to councils were not altogether very strong.
Studying the decree evokes the image of a works council as a rather weak
organism with certain powers in personnel affairs but with no real
authority to influence decisively any issues of substance concerning the

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IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

267
of
a
in
These
issues
were
the
hands
firm.
of
the
running
squarely
management.
Also, no longer were councils up against private business owners.
The system of national administration, followed by the nationalization
of vast sectors of the economy, brought to the fore a class of managers
that was installed by the new, democratic authorities of Czechoslovakia.
Consequently, works councils and factory management were no longer
generally perceived as being on opposite sides of the class fence. Only
seldom was the opinion voiced that nationalization serves in particular
the interests of the rapidly expanding bureaucracy which' ought to be
subjected to workers' control,30and such warnings were curbed or went
unheeded. The overriding 'economic interests of society' became the
catch-all phrase for justifying any decision of the economic bureaucracy.
Thus one might well consider the Works Councils Decree of October
1945 as signalling the end of the works councils both as an independent
political force and as an element of self-management in the economy.
A more charitable view might postpone the date of their demise until
the elections of 1947. Either way, the evidence is obvious and clear-cut.
By 1947 at the very latest workers were no longer interested in the
works councils, which had fallen prey to the Communist Party. Yet the
councils, virtually devoid of content, continued to exist as a separate
entity for another year. In February 1948 itRO convened a national
Works Council Congress which then formed the backdrop for the
communist takeover. After fulfilling that task, works councils became
completely expendable, and the anomalous organizational duality of the
ROH, with works councils existing side by side with ROH locals, was
resolved without further delay. In March 1948 works councils and ROH
locals were merged by law, thus sealing a process of communist struggle
against independent working-class power and workers' control of
industry that had started some three years previously.
Notwithstanding the fact that works councils hardly survived the first
postwar winter as relatively independent bodies, 20 years later, during
the Prague Spring, the whole period of I945-48 was frequently referred
to as one worthy of emulation as far as workers' influence on decisionmaking was concerned, as a period during which workers really did
have some independent power. Upon close scrutiny this contention
does not hold water: any real power of the workers had lasted only until
the KSC wrested it away. Why then this attraction of the councils for
the Prague Spring?
The attraction was supported by two phenomena. First, ignorance.
30 Cf.
e.g. Jiri Veltrusky, Byrokracie, demokracie a delnickd thida (Prague, 1946),
especially pp. I -14.

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268

WORKS COUNCILS

The close scrutiny necessary for uncovering the true situation of the
councils was never made. True, the years I945-48 had a special
attraction altogether for the Prague Spring. Those were the years when
the Communist Party had been strong yet not totalitarian, when
parliamentary democracy existed, when the country was discussing a
'specific Czechoslovak road' to socialism. All these were concepts that
the Prague Spring sought to rehabilitate, and finding inspiration in the
country's not-too-distant past was only logical. In line with this manner
of thinking, the very fact that councils had once existed but were
subsequently liquidated suggested that there must have been something
worthwhile about them.
It is therefore all the more surprising to find that the history of the
councils was never, to the best of this writer's knowledge, subjected to
a critical analysis. Though there exist numerous works dealing with the
economic and the political situation of I945-48, as well as several
articles devoted to finely apportioned segments of the works councils'
history, a thorough study of councils and of their development remains
to be written.
This gap in historical scholarship was further accentuated by the
indifference with which the Czechoslovak press treated the issue during
the Prague Spring. In newspapers and mass-circulation magazines and
reviews there appeared not a single article with information about the
postwar councils.31Any knowledge that the general public and workers
in particular had of them would have been based on memory only.
One can only speculate here, but memory probably helped smooth
over the rough edges of reality, if only because of subsequent developments during the fifties. For, not only were works councils, once an
element of self-management, abolished after the 1948 communist takeover, but in the following years every form of worker participation
degenerated into grotesque caricature. ROH, the labour movement,
lost its independence soon, but during the I950s even its very existence
was at stake on occasion. In the retrospective light of these developments,
the works councils of the early postwar period appeared attractive
despite their subsequent fate.32
The second basis for the attraction that works councils held in I968
was what one might describe as historical transposition. Interest in
history is not self-nourishing. An historical question is of interest only
so far as it has bearing on problems of the historian's own times.
Contemplating the connection of the past with the present, the student
31 But cf. Ludmila Sumberovai and Lubomir Lehar in Odborda, I968, nos. I
I2, respectively. Odbordr is a fortnightly for ROH officers.

and

One ought not to forget, however, that we know little of whether workers really
did have any illusions about the councils. Public and recorded references to works
councils were made not by workers but by politicians and social scientists.
32

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IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

269
an
isolates
historical
and
it
from
its
phenomenon
frequently
transposes
his
to
own
environment.
original setting
Performing this exercise with the works councils yields interesting
results. In their own time, the councils were turned into transmission
belts of the ROH, and the ROH was turned into a transmission belt of
the KSC. That was the end of the councils. However, 20 years later
things were different. Even if in 1968 the entire organizational and legal
setting of the councils-with the manner of elections, their rights, etc.could have been restored unchanged, nothing would have operated in
the same fashion, because all participants of the show had changed.
The ROH of I968 was not the ROH of 1946, the KSC of 1968 was not
that of 1946. Finally, the workers were not the same either. The works
councils would obviously have been different as well. And it was
precisely these councils that were being hailed in public speeches: not
the actual historical experience of councils in 1945-48, but councils as
they would have functioned if transposed into the reality of I968. The
extent to which the 'councils of labour' of I968-69 actually did resemble
the 'works councils' of I945-47 would, oc course, require an altogether
separate investigation.33
Santa Monica, California

33 For some problems concerning councils in I968-69

see my 'Czechoslovak
Workers' Councils (1968-69)', Telos (St. Louis), no. 28 (Summer I976), pp. 36-54.

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