Shipyard Strike

Tide of protest engulfs Gdansk

Ten years ago, violent food price riots broke out in the grimy Baltic seaport of Gdansk, spread rapidly to other regions and threatened to sweep the country. The government's brutal response left hundreds of workers dead and forced the resignation of Communist Party Leader Wladyslaw Gomulka. His successor, Edward Gierek, had good cause to reflect upon those events last week. The workers of Gdansk were up in arms again: 16,000 angry employees of the Lenin Shipyard went on strike and occupied the sprawling complex. They were soon joined by bus drivers and workers at some 17 other factories, and the number of strikers swelled to more than 50,000.

The Gdansk upheaval capped a seven-week wave of strikes in Poland, most of them protesting the sharp rise in meat prices since July 1. More than 200 factories and enterprises have been affected by unrest in such cities as Warsaw, Lublin, Lodz and Wroclaw. Since the strikes began, the government has offered pay increases totaling some $117 million, but has refused to lower meat prices.

The Gdansk workers tacked a number of political demands onto their calls for a $67-a-month pay increase and a rollback of meat prices. Among them: the establishment of more representative trade unions and the building of a monument to the 49 Gdansk workers killed during the 1970 riots. Seeking to avoid another bloody confrontation, officials at first showed a surprising willingness to negotiate, even at the risk of conferring a de facto legitimacy on the right to strike. Hours after the Gdansk action began, the state-controlled press reported that the government had offered a $40-a-month pay increase, a sum the strikers rejected. But official patience appeared to fray as the strike spread. Shortly after Gierek returned from a visit to the Soviet Union, Premier Edward Babiuch hinted ominously on national television that Poland's "unbreakable allies" might have to act unless "we can overcome these problems."

At week's end, the official Polish news agency announced that a tentative settlement with the shipyard workers had fallen through after a few hours. Workers in Gdansk, however, claimed to have ended their strike after winning a $50 pay raise; they said they would continue to occupy the shipyard through the weekend in solidarity with strikers elsewhere.

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