The disintegration of socialism that occurred across Europe in the late 1980's prompted significant changes in the area of Industrial Relations. With all of the institutional changes in place, the role and functions of trade unions have been fundamentally challenged. This ongoing development of post-socialist worker representation and trade unions within new operating conditions forms the focus of this book. The book offers a process-oriented perspective of union development. The complexity of the dynamic processes of union formation is used in order to explain weak conflict-based forms of worker representation in Ukraine. A general overview of union development includes a discussion of the various currents, tensions and approaches to worker representation within reformed and independent trade unions. Using detailed examples of enterprise-based unions in Ukraine, it demonstrates the effects of the co-existence of and competition between reformed and newly emerging trade unions on the development of conflict-based worker representation in the post-socialist context.
