The book’s main idea is to study why and how successful forms of workers’ interest representation could emerge in a hostile context. The post-communist context makes it difficult for workers and trade unions to mobilize, pose threats to employers, and break out of their political isolation. But initial fieldwork uncovered many instances of worker groups and trade unions that overcame such difficulties, something that led to the following overarching research question: What specific strategies can succeed in advancing the rights and living standards of workers? The book’s main argument is that strategy matters even under the harshest conditions. Successful unions ensured a situational definition connecting the workers’ and the union leaders’ perceptions about employers and thus ensuring that workers would back the actions of the union. Furthermore, successful unions calibrated threats they addressed to employers to the production intentions of the employer and to the employer’s organizational structure. They also ensured outside support, at least in the form of state intervention. The cases studied in this book are 18 conflict episodes at 10 privatized plants in the Romanian steel industry and Ukraine’s civil machine-building sector in the 2000s.