The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Ukraine was established after Ukraine became independent on 6 October 1990. It was a successor to the Ukrainian Republican Council of Trade Unions, which was part of the
All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. The declaration creating the FPU was signed by 25 national and 24 regional trade unions. In November 1992, at its Second (Extraordinary) Congress, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Ukraine was renamed the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine. In June and July 2011, the
Prosecutor General of Ukraine opened 35 criminal cases against the FPU for alleged misappropriation of sanatoriums. In November,
Vasyl Khara, the president of FPU resigned In 2013 and 2014, during the
Euromaidan protests, the union's office in Kyiv, the
Trade Unions Building, served as the headquarters for the protesters. As a consequence of the fighting, the building burned to the ground. In June 2014, a group of people wearing army fatigues bearing the insignia of
Right Sector and
Social-National Assembly stormed the FPU Council in Kyiv in an attempt to disrupt the election of a new leadership. It was unclear whether they had any relation to the Right Sector and Social-National Assembly group themselves. In 2020, after the election of
Volodymyr Zelenskyy the government doubled down on earlier legal processes to acquire property owned by the FPU. The same year, the
Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation alleged that union officials had sold 80 properties illegally by not consulting with the government before selling. In 2022, the government passed controversial labour laws that invalidated
collective agreements during martial law, legalised
zero-hour contracts, increased the maximum legal work day to 12 hours, and allowed employers to fire workers without justification. As a response, the FPU presented a challenge in the
Constitutional Court and with the
International Labour Organization. In October 2022, the FPU was granted affiliate status to the
European Trade Union Confederation. In April 2025, the union's president Grygorii Osovyi was put under house arrest along with the leader of the
KVPU, amid government moves to seize property owned by the FPU, an action sparking response from the international labour movement. The reasoning for the arrest being misappropriation of property the government sees as their own. On April 22, the headquarters of the FPU were seized and transferred to a private trust by the
Asset Recovery and Management Agency. ==Affiliates==