Solidarity Begins Strikes to Push for Polish Change - NYTimes.com
Solidarity Begins Strikes to Push for Polish Change
By JOHN TAGLIABUE, Special to The New York Times
Published: August 12, 1989
WARSAW, Aug. 11— The Solidarity union today began the first of a series of one-hour work stoppages planned throughout Poland to press the Communist Government to step up political and economic change.
In the Baltic port of Gdansk, where strikes and protests led to the union's formation nine years ago, Solidarity spokesmen said tens of thousands of workers laid down their tools at roughly 430 factories.
The work stoppages, which are to be followed by similar actions next Wednesday and Friday in heavily industrialized Lower Silesia and Western Pomerania, a coastal area, appear to reflect the union's desire to rally its scattered forces and maintain pressure on the Communist leadership while at the same time avoiding massive shutdowns that would inflict damage on an already beleaguered economy. Though the strikes are partly in response to steep food price increases, among recent steps by the Government to decentralize the price system, the focus of the protest was mainly political change. Call for Adjustments
In calling for the strikes, the Solidarity leadership said it demanded adjustments to the system of wage compensation that the Government had approved to cushion the food-price increases.
But the demands of the opposition go deeper. They include calls for an end to the Government's monopoly on the purchasing and distribution of food products, the abolition of the system of Communist appointments to high economic posts and an end to the practice of selling company assets to Communist managers under the guise of privatization. Other economic demands included a call for uniform taxation.
But the list of demands also included highly charged political issues, like free and open elections for local government posts and the right to create Solidarity cells in the sensitive Ministries of Defense and Internal Affairs.
The strikes took place against the backdrop of efforts in Warsaw by the recently elected Prime Minister, Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, to assemble a cabinet of ministers to run the executive branch of the Government. Prime Minister Opposed
On Monday, the Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa, had called for efforts to oust General Kiszczak, whom many Solidarity supporters detest for his role in tracking down underground union leaders when he was Interior Minister at the time of martial law.
Mr. Walesa, who joined striking workers at the big Paris Commune shipyard, in the port of Gdynia, near Gdansk, told workers, ''I opposed Kiszczak before, and I will do it now that he is Prime Minister.''
''No government could stay in office more than 10 months,'' the union leader was quoted by Reuters as telling the crowd, ''and I doubt that Kiszczak will succeed in forming a new Government.''
Barbara Majdaniczyk, a Solidarity spokesman, said that ''almost every factory'' in the Gdansk region, plus buses and some shops, stopped from the noon siren until 1 P.M. Doctors and nurses stood in front of hospitals to show their solidarity, she said by phone from the port city. And in factories with Solidarity cells, workers closed the gates and draped them and adjacent buildings with red and white union banners and Polish flags. Lenin Yards Not Struck
But she said workers had refrained from striking the big Lenin Shipyard, the birthplace of Solidarity, so as not to hinder the efforts of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, the Polish-born heir to much of the Johnson & Johnson products fortune, who is trying to save the yard from bankruptcy with injections of Western capital.
In June, Mrs. Johnson, who is widely known in Poland for her philanthropy, agreed to take control of the yard and revive its shipbuilding activities by Jan. 1, 1990. The austerity-minded Government had earmarked the money-losing yard for liquidation.
In the northern harbor, a center of cargo handling, Mrs. Majdaniczyk said a manager offered the workers bonuses to continue working, but only six of the crew accepted.
Jacek Gurski, an editor at The Tygodnik Gdanski weekly, estimated that as many as 430 factories may have been affected, excluding some that produce perishable products like cheese that could spoil if work stopped. Call Heeded by Many
Bogdan Olszewski, the Solidarity chairman in the Gdansk region, estimated the number of union members there at 70,000 to 80,000, but he could not say how many workers had followed the call to strike.
The strike appeared to have been heeded by many workers with no affiliation to Solidarity. In Warsaw, Stanislaw Wilenski, a spokesman for the Communist labor unions that were set up in 1982 to replace Solidarity, when it was outlawed under martial law, said that the organization, which claims 7 million members nationwide, supported the work stoppages.
Political leaders have said they expected General Kiszczak to present a list of ministers to Parliament for approval later next week, though political activity was expected to slow over a four-day holiday weekend.
Despite the heavily political cast to the walkouts, workers in many places are also demanding steep pay raises to offset the food price increases. In Gdansk, newspapers failed to appear today after printers walked out Thursday demanding pay increases ranging from 100 to 150 percent.
photo of Solidarity workers during one-hour work stoppage (AP); map of Poland highlighting Gdansk