kovanda, karel. works councils in czechoslovakia 1945-47

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Works Councils in Czechoslovakia, 1945-47Author(s): Karel KovandaSource: Soviet Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 255-269Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/150755 .Accessed: 08/02/2015 14:13

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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 Communist Subversion 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'.


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. Neverthe- less, 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 so- called 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 councils in 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 Czecho- slovakia 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, DMlnicke rady na Hornimz Slezskuz (Ostrava, I960); id., Revolticni delnicke hnuti na Morave a ve Slezsku, 1917-1921 (Prague, I957).

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 odborovd politika (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.

256 WORKS COUNCILS


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). TVRO had 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 Com- munist 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, OIRO appealed 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. 7 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 Februdru (Bratislava, I967), p. 9. 8 Reproduced in Ruic2ika, op. cit., pp. 292-4.

IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 257


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. 10 For a discussion of the concept, cf. e.g. Karel Kaplan, 'Hospodiaska demokracie

v letech I945-1948', in Oeskoslovensky casopis historickfy, i966, no. 14, pp. 844-6i, and especially his Zndrodneni a socialismus (Prague, 1968).

258 WORKS CO UNCILS


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 further- more 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 state- controlled 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 conduct of the purge, still an untouched topic for contemporary Czechoslovak 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 directives for conducting the purge, cf. e.g. Budovdnz jednotn3ych odboru 1944-r946 (Prague, 1965), pp. 56-57.

12 For fascinating details concerning the political affiliation of newly appointed managers-national administrators-cf. Milos Klimes and Marcel Zachoval, 'Prispevek k problematice unorovvch udalosti', Ceskoslovensky casopis historicky, 1958, no. 6, p. i98n.

13 The Decree was signed on I9 May I945. National administrations were being formed earlier in some cases: all mines in the Ostrava region had them by Io May (Vrabec, op. cit., p. I4I).

14 For a fairly detailed review of a case in point, the Zaitka foodstuffs firm in Ceske Budejovice, cf. Riuicka, op. cit., pp. 78, i5Iff, i65. 15 Ladislav Urban, Otdzky ndrodni a demokraticke revoluce v CSR (Prague, x955), p. 266, and Vrabec, op. cit.



nationalization.16 The 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 work on the subject of nationalization is Kaplan, Zndrodneni a socialismus. 17 For the Communist Party, the question for a long time stood as that of 'the character of the revolution'. Was it 'national and democratic', directed against the Nazis and their allies, or 'socialist', directed also against the home bourgeoisie? In line with Moscow and Comintern policy of the time, the KSC for a long time advocated the first line, to the point of alienating segments of the working class who, right from the end of the war, had been calling for implementing socialist changes. For the position of the KSC and of other political parties on nationalization, cf. Kaplan, Zndrodneni a socialismus, pp. IIff, and Vrabec, op. cit. 18 Bohumil Lausman, the Social Democratic Minister of Industry, presented them at a Conference of Prague Works Councils on 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, Zndrodneni a socialismus, p. 238n.

21 For an analysis of the postwar political arena, cf. Karel Kaplan, 'Odbory v mechanismu lidove demokraticke moci v letech I945-1948', in Odbory a nase revoluce, PP. 94-I98.

WORKS COUNCILS 260


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 introducing a 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 hypo- thetical 'ROH locals' (odborove skupiny) 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.

IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 26I


'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 intro- duced 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.

WVORKS COUNCILS 262


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 counter- proposal 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 communist- controlled 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-crucially- indefinite 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.

F



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 I946,28 and 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.29 In 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 com- patible 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. 28 Government Ordinance No. 216/I946 Sb. 29 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.

WORKS COUNCILS 264


TABLE I

NUMBER OF ELECTIONS TO WORKS COUNCILS AND NUMBER OF COUNCILS ELECTED ON FIRST BALLOT, BY REGIONS OF THE CZEcH LANDS, PRIOR TO

30 MAY 1947

Region No. of No. of councils % elections elected in first ballot

Praha 1,358 854 63 Brno 900 592 66 Ostrava 585 313 59 Plzeni 358 244 69 Most 379 257 67 Liberec 213 145 68 O3sti n.L. 338 222 66 Kladno 288 201 70

Industrial Regions 4,4I9 2,828 64

Jihlava I85 138 75 Hradec Kralove 448 402 90 Karlovy Vary 261 205 79 Kolin 465 347 75 Mladi Boleslav 423 352 83 Olomouc 407 233 57 Pardubice 383 257 67 Sumperk 124 87 70 Tabor 297 207 74 Zlin 280 215 77 Znojmo 43 31 72 Ceske Budejovice 26i 195 75

Less Industrial Regions 3,751 2,881 77 National Total 8,170 5,709 70

TABLE 2

NUMBER OF ELECTIONS TO WORKS COUNCILS AND NUMBER OF COUNCILS ELECTED ON FIRST BALLOT, BY SIZE OF FIRM, PRIOR TO

I MAY 947

Size of firm, in No. of No. of councils % no. of employees elections elected on first ballot

less than Ioo 5,400 4,103 76 100-500 1,998 I,I45 57 500-I,000 224 I2 44 I,00o-3,000 io8 32 30 over 3,000 I4 1 7

Total 7,774 5,393 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.



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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running of a firm. These issues were squarely in the hands of the 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,30 and 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 decision- making 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.



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.31 Any 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 and I2, respectively. Odbordr is a fortnightly for ROH officers. 32 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.

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frequently isolates an historical phenomenon and transposes it from its original setting to his own environment.

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.



Article Contentsp. [255]p. 256p. 257p. 258p. 259p. 260p. 261p. 262p. 263p. 264p. 265p. 266p. 267p. 268p. 269

Issue Table of ContentsSoviet Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 183-350Front Matter [pp. 183-184]The Zhukov Affair Reconsidered [pp. 185-213]The Distribution of Earnings and Incomes in the Soviet Union [pp. 214-237]The Place of Agriculture in the European Communist Economies: A Statistical Essay [pp. 238-254]Works Councils in Czechoslovakia, 1945-47 [pp. 255-269]The Belorussians: National Identification and Assimilation, 1897-1970. Part 2: 1939-70 [pp. 270-283]Liquidity Crises in the Yugoslav Economy: An Alternative to Bankruptcy? [pp. 284-295]A Note on the Ageing of the Politburo [pp. 296-305]Soviet Communist Party Membership under Brezhnev: A Comment [pp. 306-316]ReviewsReview: Soviet-American Trade: Prospect and Retrospect [pp. 317-323]Review: untitled [pp. 324-326]Review: untitled [pp. 326-328]Review: untitled [pp. 328-330]Review: untitled [pp. 330-331]Review: untitled [pp. 331-333]Review: untitled [pp. 333-335]Review: untitled [pp. 335-336]Review: untitled [pp. 336-339]Review: untitled [pp. 339-340]Review: untitled [pp. 340-341]

Book Notices [pp. 342-344]Correspondence: Kalecki in Poland [pp. 344-346]Books Received [pp. 346-348]Back Matter [pp. 349-350]

kovanda, karel. works councils in czechoslovakia 1945-47

Documents

works councils of i945

jstor terms

jstor archive

terms conditions of

political struggle

overall control

communist subversion

political institutions