Milan Štěch, leader of the Czech Republic's largest confederation of trade unions and a Social Democratic senator, did not grow up in a household devoted to organized labor.

His roots are agrarian, he proudly notes, his family one of the oldest known in the town of Třeboň, South Bohemia, a 10-minute drive east of České Budějovice. His grandfather was a local politician and his father, high-school educated and bourgeois, a successful private farmer. From the end of World War II to the mid-1950s, including Štěch's birth in 1953, life and business was good.

Then came reverberations from a law passed in February 1949 by the communist government of Klement Gottwald that led to the "voluntary" founding of farmers' cooperatives and, to meet punishing state-mandated quotas, their subsequent collectivization. Private farmers who resisted, like Štěch's father, were labeled kulaks and put under intense pressure to cave. In 1956, Štěch's father was finally cowed through searches of their home by the local police and the StB. He joined the local cooperative.

"I was 4 years old at the time," Štěch says. "I was frightened and cried a lot." The discrimination his family faced as holdouts did not end with their concession to the cooperative. "As a child of a kulak, I felt marked and separated from other kids at elementary school."

Sitting in his Žižkov office on a November afternoon, he recalls those days as the view through his large windows of Old Town and Prague Castle loses the burnishing sunlight. He is tense when he talks about his childhood and early career: As he leans forward and punctuates points with light slaps against the table, his gray suit cinches around his thickening and once-athletic frame. Later, when talk shifts to politics, he visibly relaxes.

At the time of the interview, Štěch is watching Parliament to see whether he will need to make good on his threat of massive demonstrations, scheduled for Nov. 25, by labor, in support of the state's new Labor Code.

His organization, the Czech and Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions (ČMKOS), representing 33 unions with a membership of some 600,000, is not happy with members of the government seeking to postpone the adoption of the new code, which is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

Critics call the Labor Code, drafted and passed over a presidential veto by the Social Democrats a month before this past summer's general elections, biased toward employees to the extent that it will harm the competitiveness of Czech companies.

But the union will brook no delay, and, if adoption is postponed, Štěch threatens to flood the streets of Prague with hundreds of thousands of laborers. A rally late last year on Wenceslas Square in support of the Labor Code drew between 20,000 and 30,000 people.

Yet, Štěch says, he wants to avoid the demonstration, if possible. "Czechs don't have that French or Spanish mentality," he says. "We're more about negotiations than taking issues to the streets."

Better living through industry

It's a life of political brinksmanship that was hardly conceivable in his youth. But, unlike his brother, who, eight years older, was already committed to farming when his family's agrarian tradition withered away, Štěch had options for his future.

At 15, he went into an industrial apprenticeship on the advice of his parents, smoldering from their losses.

"They told me, 'Better to work in industry than to wind up as an unqualified manual laborer in the village or work with those setting up the cooperative farm.' "

After his apprenticeship, Štěch joined the Škoda factory at České Budějovice as a machinist. At the factory, "no one reminded me of my politically incorrect roots, and I had the chance to create my own image."

The image fit, and Štěch rose fast.

"Something like 99 percent of the employees were trade union members," he says. All unions at the time were part of the communist-controlled Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH). "I used to play soccer in those days, so I was more known than some other employees. I expressed myself well and could comment on the day's issues. That was why the union offered me a low-level position at the age of 25."

By 1989, Štěch was a full-time union man, chairman of the local. Perhaps because of his youthful 36 years and despite his position, he became a prominent member of the České Budějovice strike committee, part of the general strikes that swept through the nation during the Velvet Revolution. The 2,000 members of his committee soon elected him head of their new, independent union.

"We told one another that anyone who behaved decently under communism had the right to take part," he says. "I remembered my roots. My grandpa used to say, 'One shouldn't go from one extreme to another.' "

From a young age, Štěch followed this advice, attributing the tragic wars of the 20th century — both hot and cold —to a lack of moderation. As a result, he says, "I'm always seeking consensus in society, social agreement." With this espoused philosophy and his position as a popular regional leader, Štěch would soon be sucked through to the vacuum created by post-revolution turnover in the then-tainted national union leadership.

In June 1990, Štěch joined the heavy industry union, one of ČMKOS's most powerful branches, as a negotiator. He rose to deputy chairman in 1992, and then won a position as a deputy chairman of ČMKOS in 1994.

That year, he took part in the negotiations between the unions, employers and government, and he noticed that the tenor of conversation between the three had grown more antagonistic from two years previous, when employers had accepted the position of the unions with little complaint. The natural conflict between industry and labor inherent to democratic, capitalist society was taking hold. Not everyone was prepared.

"In our country, the idea of a civic society is not working," says Štěch. "Some people are suspicious of those who get into conflicts," as the unions regularly do in defending the interests of their constituents. "Here, those who do nothing get the most praise."

This may explain the results of a recent poll conducted by the CVVM agency that found unions to be the second-least trusted social institution in the country, after the church. That may also be because fewer Czechs see the necessity of organized labor at all: Since Štěch's election as chairman of ČMKOS in 2002, the union has lost 300,000 members, a trend he has yet to halt.

Like many public figures, Štěch also sees his union as a victim of persecution from opponents and the media. He saves particular scorn for those who paint his union red.

"There's a post-communist wave that has seen the entire political spectrum turn to the right, and this has landed on the unions like a hammer," he says. "People try to link us with the time before 1989. But you can link just about anyone with this time."

Štěch doesn't deny that unions before the revolution were operatives of the National Front, going as far as to say that they "were often given tasks no one else wanted."

But he maintains that unions did some good, improving working conditions and even negotiating higher wages. Of course, these changes were modest — 90 percent of the company's earnings still went to the state.

Labor-intensive

The day of the threatened labor demonstrations, Nov. 25, comes and goes without incident. The Social Democratic and Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia deputies have announced ahead of the date that they will not support any delay in implementing the Labor Code, ensuring that the law will go into effect, as scheduled, Jan. 1.

Štěch got his wish, and ČMKOS canceled the demonstration.

But, soon after, 73 conservative deputies filed a complaint against the Labor Code with the Constitutional Court. The court's review of the complaint will not be completed for six to nine months. Meanwhile, the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry has announced that it is drafting an amendment to the code that will correct some of its mistakes or excesses favoring employees over employers.

Štěch will likely object to some of these proposed changes, and negotiations will begin again.

Unions have a place in the future of Europe, he says, despite any lingering associations with the communist era. And he will lead ČMKOS into this Europe, at least for the next four years — he won a second term this past year, running unopposed. What remains to be seen is how anemic the union's body, losing members, will become.

"People are afraid or indifferent," says Štěch. "They feel someone else will fight for them. They don't understand that a trade union's strength is its people's willingness to engage."