He was born and baptized Johann Krek[1] in a peasant family in the village of Sveti Gregor (now in the Municipality of Ribnica in Lower Carniola), in what was then the Austrian Empire.

Influenced by the ultra-conservative thought of the Roman Catholic bishop of Krk Anton Mahnič, and by the encyclic Rerum novarum, he attacked the liberal economic system as being anti-social and anti-democratic.

As the result such mobilization, the People's Party won by landslide the first elections by general suffrage in Austria in 1907, gaining 20 of the 24 Slovene seats in the Austrian Parliament.

In 1909, Krek founded the Yugoslav Labor Association (Jugoslovanska strokovna zveza), which would become and remain the biggest trade union in the Slovene Lands until its dissolution in 1941.

Krek was a convinced supporter of the idea of the unity of South Slav peoples, and many later commentators, including the historian Lojze Ude and Communist politician Boris Kidrič, reproached him with "Slavic romanticism" and "Yugoslav nationalism".