 The Free Association of German Trade Unions ( German : Freie Vereinigung deutscher <unk> ; abbreviated FVdG ; sometimes also translated as Free Association of German Unions or Free Alliance of German Trade Unions ) was a trade union federation in Imperial and early Weimar Germany . It was founded in 1897 in Halle under the name Representatives ' Centralization of Germany as the national umbrella organization of the localist current of the German labor movement . The localists rejected the centralization in the labor movement following the sunset of the Anti @-@ Socialist Laws in 1890 and preferred grassroots democratic structures . The lack of a strike code soon led to conflict within the organization . Various ways of providing financial support for strikes were tested before a system of voluntary solidarity was agreed upon in 1903 , the same year that the name Free Association of German Trade Unions was adopted . 
