High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Free Association of German Trade Unions (German: Freie Vereinigung deutscher Gewerkschaften (help·info); 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 the name Free Association of German Trade Unions was adopted.