Poland Strike Two

By Thomas A. Sancton

Like a familiar newsreel of some historic event, thousands of Polish workers walked off their jobs last week in a chain reaction of strikes that recalled the dramatic 1980 movement that gave birth to the independent Solidarity labor union. In the northwestern city of Bydgoszcz, bus and tram drivers paralyzed the public transport system for twelve hours and won a 63% pay raise. Next day workers struck at the sprawling Lenin steel mill near the southern city of Cracow, while employees at a military-equipment plant in the southeastern city of Stalowa Wola reportedly won large wage demands after putting down their tools at week's end.

Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa quickly endorsed the apparently spontaneous protests on behalf of his outlawed organization. He and fellow Solidarity activists are in a delicate position: they fear the consequences of massive strikes but are eager to play a role in any new round of negotiations between the workers and the regime. Conceding that huge across-the-board wage increases would undermine the already tottering economy, Walesa called for genuine economic and political reforms instead.

The protests were a direct challenge to the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, 64, who crushed Solidarity and declared martial law in 1981. Since 1987, emulating Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Jaruzelski has sought to streamline Poland's creaky economy. On Feb. 1 and April 1 of this year, the government introduced a series of price hikes accompanied by compensatory payments to workers. The result was a first-quarter inflation rate of 45% and bitter complaints that workers could not keep up with the cost of living.

Fed up with their worsening lot, 600 Bydgoszcz drivers walked off the job early last week. Krzysztof Wojt, a Communist Party member and leader of the local official transport union, headed daylong negotiations with local authorities. Although they were seeking to double their pay, from 21 cents to 40 cents an hour, the drivers finally accepted a compromise offer of 34 cents and went back to work.

Next day more than 14,000 workers at the Lenin steelworks went on strike in the drab Cracow suburb of Nowa Huta. Besides seeking 50% pay hikes for themselves, they insisted that compensatory payments be doubled for millions of other Poles. The Nowa Huta strikers also called for reinstatement of four fired Solidarity activists.

Negotiations at Nowa Huta had seemed near agreement at midweek, when factory managers broke off talks. Next day the managers and the leaders of the official union met in an apparent effort to divide the strikers. As tension mounted, authorities threatened to fire strikers and hinted that riot police might break up the protest. Several dozen Solidarity activists and sympathizers were detained, including Jacek Kuron, a senior Solidarity adviser. On Saturday, the government announced an accord with the trade union, but the strike continued.

The strikes presented the government with a painful dilemma. Caving in to the widespread demands for more pay would derail plans for economic restructuring. Yet the use of force against strikers would shatter the government's pretensions of openness and democratization, ruining any chance of winning public support for the proposed reforms. The seeming failure of such innovations to produce concrete results and gain popular backing in Poland does not augur well for the future of restructuring efforts elsewhere in the East bloc, including the Soviet Union.

With reporting by Tadeusz Kucharski/Warsaw and Angela Leuker/Vienna