First Edition of the Communist ’Red Pravda", 1920

The establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918 meant, among other things, a break with the previous repressive authoritarian policy of the Habsburg monarchy and greater democratization of society. This also meant a strengthening of the role of trade unions, greater rights for workers, and improved working and wage conditions. In the first years of its existence, Czechoslovakia adopted a number of very progressive social laws that represent the pillars of a democratic society. However, the society achieved all of this through several decades of struggles by the labor movement for greater equality in society. This often meant physical confrontation with factory owners, who were backed by the state with military support. An important milestone for the further development of negotiations between workers and factory owners was the adoption of the so-called Coalition Act of April 7, 1870, which legalized trade unions and the right to strike.

One of the first laws of Czechoslovakia was the enactment of a maximum eight-hour working day. It also included, for example, the enactment of mandatory vacation for all categories of workers, including blue-collar workers and pension insurance.

What strategies did factory owners choose to break up organized labor? What development did the unions themselves undergo by the end of World War I? And what are we entitled to today thanks to the union movement? I asked these questions to historian Jakub Raška from the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, whose book about the beginnings of the union movement in the Czech lands will be published by Academia Publishing House next year.

If we were to outline the situation of the working class in the first half of the 19^th century, what challenges and uncertainties did workers have to deal with at this time? And how much did the situation of the working class in Britain, where the Industrial Revolution began in the second half of the 18^th century, differ from the situation in the Czech lands ?

If we imagine Europe around 1800, there is a stark difference between continental Europe and Britain. In Britain, the nobility had no better position in trade and production. There were no more guild monopolies. These had dissolved in the late Middle Ages. In Britain, large factories, powered by machines, had been growing since the end of the 18^th century. People were moving to cities in large numbers, and this was causing various social problems such as overcrowding, poor hygiene, alcoholism, a large concentration of poor, unsupported people, and increased infant mortality. The working conditions of the workers were insane. They worked 15 hours a day, and they went to sleep in rooms that we could hardly call home.

And already in the first half of the 19^th century, we encounter machine production in Prague, for example in the Prague cardboard factories, where the first resistance to the introduction of machine production occurred, which was often the trigger for organized resistance by the workers to the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution.

In the Czech lands, machine production did not play a major role in the first half of the 19^th century, but there were still industries where it was introduced. And this was primarily the textile industry at first. During the Napoleonic Wars, textile goods from Great Britain stopped being imported to Europe, as the so-called continental blockade was introduced there. This triggered a wave of establishing textile factories for mass production in our country. The most famous of them were the so-called kartounky, which were textile factories for printing cotton. It was one of the first examples of a sector that was mechanized. Machines that replaced human labor were called perrotins. These spread in Prague in the 1820s. The first major resistance to this introduction of machine production in kartounky spread to the Czech lands in 1844. At that time, kartounky workers demonstrated for better pay conditions. During these demonstrations, machines were demonstratively broken, which is something we see in Britain with the so-called Luddite movement.

Would you describe similar waves of social unrest, such as the one mentioned in 1844, as a certain way of negotiating with factory owners? Because at that time the workers had no representation and it was purely up to the employer to determine what working and wage conditions they would have.

Yes, this is an important point, because the role of guilds in the economic life of cities and rural nobility is constantly decreasing, and their place is not immediately taken by the state, which would become a guarantor of working conditions, product quality or an institution caring for dependent craftsmen and serfs. In the first half of the 19^th century, the state more or less only supports technological innovations and ensures that their introduction does not threaten the existing distribution of society and political power too much. In potential conflicts between employers and employees, it tends to side with the employers, since any worker activity was associated with destruction and revolution, as happened in France. The idea of tripartism with the role of the state as a moderator of the interests of employees and employers is more widespread after the First and especially after the Second World War.

If we were to move to the period of the Revolution of 1848, what role did the working class play in it? What demands did they bring to the events of the revolution and how successful were they with them ?

If we look at the workers’ movement in Prague or Brno, there were already several thousand people in the textile industry, at least, who formed a distinct social class. The middle classes, who led the revolution, were interested in pacifying workers’ anger. For this reason, the middle classes founded various charitable associations for workers, which were supposed to help them. A magazine for workers was founded in Prague, but at the same time no workers appeared in it. In other words, in the Czech lands, workers did not even get to the point of being able to create their own political program, which would represent a vision of a different world or alternative justice. However, a different situation occurred in Vienna, Berlin or Leipzig, where workers founded unions, political associations and even entered into dialogue with radical democrats and tried to think about politics and participate in it.

So when does a larger workers’ organization start in the Czech lands and in what sectors?

In the early days of the workers’ movement, the main social carriers were proletarianized craftsmen who lost orders due to the introduction of machine production, as factories and manufactories were able to produce products faster and cheaper. During the 1850s, i.e. during the so-called Bach absolutism, industry accelerated enormously. Although the regime severely suppressed any political activities, it also started up the economy and entrepreneurial activity. In essence, it sent a signal to society that you can do business, you can get very rich, but don’t get involved in politics. The 1850s are the beginning of big industry in our country, which means that only then did the industrial cities we imagine – full of smoking chimneys and thousands of workers – emerge.

This is then manifested in the 1860s, which is a period when the topic of civil society is raised again. What did not work out in the revolution of 1848-1849 is raised again in this period. So a certain agreement was made with the state representatives that some civil equality would happen, but it would not be in leaps and bounds, but gradually. At this time, workers began to enter the public space more. There was a big change within the national movement. As late as the middle of the century, various leaders of the Czech national movement, such as Havlíček or Palacký, imagined peasants as the type of ideal people from the people. The Czech countryside was mainly celebrated, while the volatile workers were portrayed as something unreliable. However, from the 1860s, it was clear that the working class would become increasingly numerous, and as a result, this meant that even the idea of a Czech nation cannot be successful if the working classes are not included in it.

So the change lies in the fact that, as a result of industrial development in the Czech lands , it is clear that the workforce will become increasingly stronger and its role will become more important and it will have to be reckoned with as a significant political and social actor?

Yes. And that is essentially the beginning of organized unions. At this time, we already see long-term worker activity that was cultural – that is, workers organized further education courses after work or formed various support associations in several fields. Workers said to themselves, if the state does not take care of us, we must take care of ourselves. So they established various company or city funds, where they supported each other in the event of illness or injury. In cases where a worker who was a long-term member of the association died, the association took care of his survivors.

The turn of the 1860s and 1870s was crucial for the Czech workers’ movement, when from an economic point of view it was a period of great economic boom. When workers saw that the economy was doing well, they became more vocal about their demands. That is why there were around a hundred strikes in various sectors in the Czech lands at that time. At that time, the Czech national movement demanded equal rights for Czechs in relation to the monarchy and organized so-called camp movements, to which representatives of the working class were also invited. It was expected that this would significantly increase participation in these demonstrations. And this was confirmed. Suddenly there were tens of thousands of people at the events. In return, the workers expected that they would be able to publicly articulate their social demands.

From what you say, it seems that there is a class-conscious workers’ movement forming here. To what extent have workers from different sectors cooperated with each other in their demonstrations and their demands for changes in working conditions and wages?

The 1860s were a turning point for the Czech environment. Previously, various skilled workers, such as typographers, looked down on unskilled workers who worked in textile factories, for example, and wanted nothing to do with them. This feeling still persisted, but it was no longer appropriate to say it publicly in the 1860s. At this time, the first workers’ magazines in the Czech language were being created. Of course, the situation was much more acute in Vienna. There, at the end of 1869, a 20,000-strong workers’ demonstration for universal suffrage for men took place. This was still something unimaginable in the Czech lands, but in any case, here too there was a real social force to be reckoned with.

When does the labor movement become active on political issues and how do workers begin to engage in political activity?

This is related to the way the trade union movement became active in the 1860s. Political issues, such as civil equality for workers, also became part of the agenda. From the early 1870s, socialist ideas began to spread among the workers in the monarchy, providing them with their first coherent social and political program. In 1874, the All-Austrian Social Democracy was established, and in 1878 the Czech branch separated from it. In response, the state, supported, for example, by Bismarck’s campaign against socialists in the neighboring German Empire, began to speak out very sharply against any socialist policy. Several show trials of so-called traitors took place. Although no one was sentenced to death, those convicted were sentenced to several months or years in prison. This also meant that the workers, in response to political persecution, returned to economic issues. And it was the seventies and eighties that recorded the first steps in concluding collective agreements and conciliatory negotiations between employees and employers.

The real boom in workers’ politics began in the 1890s. First, the workers’ movement became mass and ceased to be a problem when someone publicly declared their support for social democracy. Second, at this time, the transformation of society from the old, class-based, highly hierarchical patriarchal to a mass civil society, where social communication takes place through the mass media and where it is legitimate for all people to influence the public space, was being completed. The society at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries was already very similar to ours.

On April 7, 1870, the so-called Coalition Act permitted trade unions and with them the right to strike. How did this happen? And how did negotiations between unions and factory owners take place at this time?

The Coalition Act of April 7, 1870 is one of the most important milestones in Czech history in the 19^th century. It is related to the pan-European process, when during the 1960s workers’, or rather trade union, organizations were permitted in France and Belgium and more liberal laws were approved in England. The Act of April 7, 1870 responded to a societal demand. It was no longer just the workers who demanded the law, but also liberal journalists who had great power to influence events not only in Vienna but also in Prague, and who published countless articles about how unfair it was that the workers could not organize on the basis of their economic demands. They did not yet write that they should be given political rights, because they believed that they were not yet sufficiently culturally prepared for that, but they should have been able to negotiate their working conditions. The persecution of workers was no longer as terrible as it had been before. As recently as the early 1960s, a striking worker could be publicly spanked on the buttocks with a cane, but by the end of the 1960s the punishment was several days or weeks in prison.

But then came the year 1870. The approval of the law was hastened by a strike of textile workers in Svárov near Jablonec nad Nisou in the spring of 1870. It was a large complex where thousands of workers were employed. The owner at the time reduced their wages by 10 percent from day to day. The strike lasted for several weeks and was finally broken with the help of the army. During the suppression of the strike, several strikers were shot and among the victims were a sixteen-year-old girl and a boy of about nine. It was a great shock for the then generally humanistic society. This event hastened the vote on the coalition law, which finally passed the Vienna parliament only about a week after the Svárov strike.

What strategies did factory owners choose to break down workers’ resistance in a situation where unions and strikes were permitted?

One popular strategy was to divide the workforce into skilled and unskilled. This divided its interests. The unions around 1870 were not an organization that was supposed to serve all employees, but rather the best-placed and most skilled workers. When there was a strike and the skilled workers demanded better conditions, the factory owners said, fine, go on strike, but the unskilled workers will go to the machines where you skilled workers were, and we will quickly train them. Often it was the unskilled workers who were supposed to replace them.

From today’s perspective, this is a very paradoxical situation. In the 19^th century, women’s work was synonymous with poorly paid and unskilled work. Skilled workers, still living in the artisan ideology of their superior position, had somehow come to terms with the fact that women worked with them in the factories, but they were very strongly opposed to them working in skilled positions. Factory owners sensed this and, through the unskilled women who worked in the factory, they managed to break the resistance of the skilled workers. Factory owners sometimes became proponents of women’s emancipation in the workplace in their public activities, while workers, on the contrary, became its opponents.

When do women first enter trade unions?

This has been happening since the 1890s, when trade union strategies were changing. At that time, the massively growing labor movement realized that unions could not defend the interests of skilled workers alone. It was already clear that machine production and factories would increase - and therefore emphasizing only the interests of the best-placed workers was a bad strategy. Trade unions therefore opened up to the unskilled, and unskilled workers, including women, were also accepted into trade union organizations. This economically rational reasoning was then supported by socialist rhetoric.

If you had to highlight the main achievements of trade unions by the end of World War I, what would you mention?

The first great success was, of course, that unions were taken into account at all. That the traditional patriarchal society, where respect for authority was the highest value, suddenly accepted that even a lower-ranking person, in this case a worker, could have some demands and claims on their superiors, i.e. factory owners. Acceptance and legalization of their activities is an extremely important social and cultural milestone and a prerequisite for anything else.

The second important thing is the expansion of collective agreements. The first collective agreement in the entire monarchy was concluded between factory owners and employees in 1848 and concerned typographers in Vienna. A similar agreement was concluded in Prague in the late 1860s and again it was typographers. During the 1990s there was a great boom in concluding similar collective agreements. The first collective agreement concluded by female workers with factory owners was concluded in 1907 and concerned ladies’ tailors in Vienna. However, the conclusion of collective agreements was initially opposed by the leaders of the socialist movement, saying that it was a betrayal of the working class and the revolution, since, according to them, it was supposed to be a reconciliation with the exploiters. However, a consensus soon emerged that such agreements did improve working conditions without the need for exhausting strikes that crushed the workers and their families.

The third essential thing was the first social legislation. Austria and Germany were among the pioneers of social legislation, which took place in the 1870s and 1880s. The original goal of social legislation, i.e. social reforms from above, was to break the revolutionary potential of the workers’ movement. However, some system of state insurance was guaranteed for people who were injured at work or were long-term ill. Other reforms – such as old-age insurance, pensions or unemployment benefits – were only addressed in the interwar period of the 20^th century.

The last thing I would like to mention is that the workers won the state to start checking more closely how its laws, for example on the protection of working children, are being observed in various enterprises. Laws that restricted the employment of young children have been around since Maria Theresa and Joseph II, but no one followed them because no one checked. Since the 1880s, when the Institute of Trade Inspectors was established, things have been improving. The 1890s and the 1900s are a time of increasing job safety and also a decline in child labor, which then increases again during the First World War because men are at the front.

If we were to compare the development of unions in our country and in Britain, what fundamental differences would you find?

The differences are enormous. In 1845, Friedrich Engels published his work “The Condition of the Working Class in England”, which he wrote during his stay in Manchester, where his father had sent him to supervise his business, thereby trying to drive out his communist delusions. Engels was fascinated by the workers’ question and, as a young progressive Hegelian, saw in the suffering of the workers’ movement a glimmer of a better future. Socialism in the pre-March period was very messianic. In his work, Engels writes that if England is the first industrial country, then the first workers’ revolution will also occur there, which will be much more brutal than, for example, the French Revolution.

However, this was not confirmed, as the liberal movement in England soon managed to integrate the workers under its wing. Moreover, workers’ activities in England were not subjected to such severe state persecution as they were in Austria or Germany, and therefore were never so revolutionary. When the first general workers’ movement arose in England, the Chartists in the 1830s, there was not a single social demand. They demanded the right to vote, secret ballots, and that representatives in parliament be paid, so that it was not a function only for the rich. Although their demands were not accepted immediately, over time, through reforms, they actually worked towards this. When the Labour Party was founded, it was not founded on the basis of socialist ideology - it was founded through the union of various trade unions. The tradition of insular social thought, which was always very practice-oriented and where utopian ideas had a more significant place for the last time perhaps during the English Civil War in the mid-17^th century, certainly not in the nineteenth century, certainly played a significant role. The workers of the British Isles were not apostles of social revolution, but in 1844, for example, they founded the first workers’ cooperative. On the other hand, the workers’ movement in Germany or in our country in Habsburg Austria listened more willingly to the call of socialist seducers, because it had been excluded from political and cultural emancipation for so long that it then accepted the model of a completely alternative world that it had to create itself. What absurd forms these essentially Enlightenment democratic ideals took in the 20^th century is another matter.

When independent Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 , what position did the unions find themselves in ?

When Czechoslovakia was founded, all political representation and social sentiments expected the new state to be much more democratic, equal and social than the Habsburg Empire, where privileges were in effect and where the Catholic Church had a strong say. At the same time, the status of workers was to improve, because the legitimacy of the regimes in the interwar period began to be based on their satisfaction. The position of trade unions at the beginning of the Czechoslovak state is therefore very good. Especially in the first years of the republic, thousands of collective agreements and a whole series of very progressive social laws were concluded. One of the first laws of Czechoslovakia was the enactment of a maximum eight-hour working day. It also included, for example, the enactment of mandatory holidays for all groups of workers, including the blue-collar workers, or pension insurance. This was a big deal, because for the first time, people who had been working their whole lives had the vision that someday in later life they would not have to work and would have some contributions from the state. All of this was gradually promoted throughout Europe, but it is important that in Czechoslovakia this arose spontaneously from the state. Over the years, the position of the unions gradually deteriorated, for example after the economic crisis or in the late 1930s, when more right-wing political currents entered the government.

The text was published with the support of the Czech branch of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

Jakub Raška

Ondrej Belicek

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