Jan Pištěk came from Moravian Slovácko and trained as a carpenter. He joined Bata in 1937 at the age of twenty-four. After the concern's plant in Zruč nad Sázavou - Bata was put into operation, he moved to the newly built company and factory town. He first worked in the factory as a carpenter foreman, and after three months became a construction supervisor during the construction of the new shops. During the Second World War he was imprisoned in Buchenwald for illegal activities: he was arrested on 3 March 1943 and returned from internment shortly before the end of the Second World War on 13 April 1945. Immediately after the liberation, he became involved in the reconstruction of the Bata concern factory in Zruč and was actively involved in local politics. Under Pištěk's leadership, the company was first placed under national administration and then nationalised in October 1945. Pištěk sat on the action committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, became a member of the local national committee and participated in the reconstruction of the local school board, whose competences were transferred to the government commissioner during the occupation. On 26 May 1946, in the general elections to the National Assembly, he was elected as a member of the new municipal national committee in Zruč nad Sázavou, which was established on 8 July 1946. In the position of national administrator and then director, he managed to overcome the post-war difficulties and put the factory into permanent operation. At the end of the 1940s, he was called from Zruč nad Sázavou to the parent company in Zlín, where he replaced Dr. Ivan Holý as director of the national company Bata/Svit and took the place of one of the national administrators after Josef Trojan, who was arrested by the State Security in December 1949. Pištěk was the head of the Svit national enterprise from 1949 to 1952. In April of the following year, he was dismissed from his post as director of the main administration of the Ministry of Light Industry. On 7 May 1955, Jan Pištěk was awarded the Order of Merit for Construction (established by Government Decree No. 30/1951 Coll. of 3 April 1951).