NEZAVISNI SINDIKATI U BOSNI I HERCEGOVINI U PERIODU 1921. DO 1924. GODINE
THE INDEPENDENT TRADE UNIONS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA IN THE PERIOD FROM 1921 TO 1924

Summary/Abstract: After the Obznana (The Promulgation) of 29/30th December, 1920 and the State Protection Law (August 2, 1921), the leftists in the workers movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the leadership of the Communist Party, operated under very difficult circumstances. The Communist Party, which had gone underground, tried to secure its position in the trade unions as basic forms of class struggle organizations of the proletariat. It pointed out that the trade unions ought to be part of the »fully integrated community of action and cooperation« with the CPY, whereas in public it advocated their independence of political parties, as the authorities required. On such principles were created trade union footholds in Bosanska Krajina and Sarajevo in the first half of 1921, which were directed by the Regional Trade Union Council. After August 2, 1921, the initiative for the creation of the Independent Trade Unions was continued (because the organizations from the first half of that year had been broken up after the passage of the State Protection Law) under the leadership of the Regional Secretariat of the CPY for Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. The association of Sarajevo tailors was the first to start functioning and all the other workers began to gather around it. Thereupon, towards the end of the year, the Organization of the Independent Trade Unions was created in Banja Luka, Zenica, whereas in Jajce an attempt was made in that direction. The inaugural regional conference of the Inter-associational Trade Union Committee for Bosnia and Herzegovina, held at Sarajevo on January 13, 1922, elected the Inter-associational Trade Union Committee for Bosnia and Herzegovina and effected a significant turning-point in the activity of the Independent Trade Unions. On February 3, with the aid of the CPY, the organ of the Independent Workers’ Trade Unions, »The Workers’ Unity«, was started, and was to come out until June 15, 1923. In Tuzla, the Local Trade Union Council was created at the end of February; in Doboj, the Temporary Local Local Trade Union Council was formed by the middle of June, 1922. In Derventa, the Local Trade Union Council was formed at the beginning of 1923. In Sarajevo, at the beginning of February, 1923, underground activity in the creation of trade union organizations was continued in the city’s wards, so that at the beginning, of May several organizations were formed, while the Temporary Committee of the Local Trade Union Council was not formed until May 9, 1924. In Mostar, the communists founded the Local Trade Union Council on March 17, 1924. . In addition to this, the Independent Trade Unions spread their activity through 11 trade associations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, organizing also the first of May celebrations from 1922 to 1924 and conducting tariff strikes, in which the CPY tried to tie together the economic struggle of workers with the political demands in the workers’ movement. The intensification of the CPY activity in the workers’ movement in the first half of 1924 upset the authorities and they prohibited, on July 12, the activity of the Independent Workers’ Party of Yugoslavia and that of the Independent Trade Unions, as well as the activity of those organizations under their leadership. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the second half of 1924, there were attempts and demands in some places (Kreka, Sarajevo, and probably Travnik) for the activity of the Independent Trade Unions in Bosnia and Herzegovina to be made legal again, but on July 13 a new prohibition of the Independent Workers’ Party of Yugoslavia put a stop to the activity of the Independent Trade Unions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which ended their activity for good. In the period from 1925 to 1929 the CPY secured a foothold in the rightist trade unions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and tried to carry out its policies among the workers organized in trade unions.

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