ROH was founded in the Czech Lands in 1946, emerging out of the factory councils and workers militias that evolve out of the wake of the Second World War.

They were however not the sole political force in the initial phase of ROH, the Trade Union Department of the Communist Party was wary of 'syndicalist' tendencies in the factory councils.

[1][2] Antonín Zápotocký, a communist pre-war labour leader who had been imprisoned for six years during the war, became the chairman of ROH in June 1947.

In the leading body of ROH, the Central Trade Union Council (ÚRO), there were 94 communists, 18 Social Democrats, 6 National Socialists and 2 from the People's Party.

In September 1968 ÚRO reaffirmed that the process of internal reforms and adoptions of new statues in the affiliated unions would continue.

The congress did steer a moderate course, as the trade union movement was pressured from both pro-reform sectors as well as Communist Party hardliners.

[6] In 1989, autonomous trade unions and strike committees surged in Czechoslovakia, which called for the dissolution of ROH.