This article examines the changing approach of the Czechoslovak (and then Czech) labour movement: from trying to reconcile support for free market reform with the defence of democracy and workers' rights, to a clearer position of workers' interest representation. Union radicalization was spurred first by successes in defending workers' rights at state level immediately after the Velvet Revolution, then increasingly by polarization forced by the entrenchment of a confident right-wing state. While the first five years of post-communist trade unionism produced apparent social consensus and union quiescence, making the Czech Republic an island of `social peace' within a much more turbulent central and eastern Europe, 1995 appeared to mark a turning of the tide towards greater conflict and opposition.
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