ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the history of post-socialist workers at the largest steel plant in Slovakia, located in the second largest Slovak city, and illustrates the development of this model of post-socialist politics. It discusses the local history of workers at the steel plant in Podbrezova, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in Central Slovakia. Slovakia experienced its most dynamic industrial development in the period of "actually existing socialism" in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the major instruments, and effects, of post-socialist transformation in Slovakia has been the privatization of state-owned industry. The process has been generally perceived as based on corruption, nepotism and cronyism. Some elements of the explanation for the lack of mobilization over changing conditions of work, and the turn towards right wing populism, can be identified in the local histories of the trade unions. Under socialism there was a single trade union organization with workplace branches, based on compulsory membership.
