This contribution to debate explores one aspect of the reconfiguration of power in the workplaces of post-communist Eastern Europe in which relations between employer and employee are informalized to the detriment of employees’ rights and decent labour standards. It focuses on the new EU member state of Lithuania, one of the poorest of the new entrants in the 2004 enlargement which embraced eight former communist countries. In choosing a ‘worst-case’ example, a central argument is explored: that of informalization as a pervasive feature of employment relations in the new market economies of post-communism.