The Government Gets Tough

A perilous new round of labor confrontations

"There is no room in Poland today for two separate power centers, thundered Party Boss Stanislaw Kania. Added Politburo Member Kazimierz Barcikowski: "Some extremists look for success not in trade union work but in maintaining a permanent pressure on state authorities. These are very dangerous tactics." Those words were spoken last week at a meeting of regional Communist Party leaders in Warsaw. They appeared to signal the start of a hardening line to ward Solidarity, Poland's federation of independent trade unions, as the government and workers engaged in a perilous new round of labor confrontations.

The menacing language was backed by the first show of governmental force since the country's labor turmoil erupted last summer. In the southeastern towns of Nowy Sacz and Ustrzyki Dolne, riot police wearing helmets and gas masks ousted militant workers and farmers from government buildings. The demonstrators were demanding the legalization of an independent farmers' union and protesting the harassment of Solidarity organizers. Violence was avoided when the protesters agreed to leave the offices.

Nonetheless, workers of the region counterpunched with a pair of "warning strikes" to protest the police action. About 100 small factories around Przemysl were shut down for an hour early last week. Workers also laid down their tools for two hours at 30 plants in and around Rzeszow, a city of 100,000 near the Soviet border. Rzeszow labor leaders warned that the whole southeastern part of the country would go out on strike if police tried to clear out the 350 demonstrators who have occupied the offices of the old party-controlled Trade Unions Council for the past three weeks. Those demonstrators, too, were demanding legal status for the new farmers' union.

In Warsaw, meanwhile, union leaders called a four-hour bus and streetcar strike at week's end to protest threatened pay cuts for workers who had stayed away from their jobs the previous Saturday. Other stoppages took place in the southern towns of Legnica and Mielec. Solidarity accused the Warsaw authorities of reneging on a promise to reduce the work week from six to five days. The government had granted the concession during negotiations that ended last summer's crippling national strike wave.

Polish authorities, however, later claimed that the catastrophic state of the economy made it impossible to eliminate Saturday work immediately. In an effort to head off a strike threat, Kama's government offered two compromise plans: a gradual move toward a five-day work week by 1985, or a work week consisting of five 8 1/2-hour days. But Solidarity's national leadership, egged on by restive local chapters, rejected the half-loaf and unilaterally declared all Saturdays work-free. According to Solidarity officers, up to 85% of Poland's workers stayed at home on Jan. 10. In the face of these mounting pressures--and threats of a possible general strike--Warsaw has agreed to hold talks this week to seek a way out of the Saturday impasse.

The Saturday work boycott renewed fears that Solidarity's escalating demands could bring on a Soviet invasion. These worries were heightened by the arrival in Warsaw last week of Soviet Marshal Viktor Kulikov, commander in chief of Warsaw Pact Joint Armed Forces. Western observers interpreted Kulikov's visit as both a gesture of support for the Kania regime and a warning to the restive workers. Some analysts speculated that Kulikov may have discussed plans for joint maneuvers on Polish soil--an operation that could serve as a cover for Soviet intervention.

One immediate casualty of Warsaw's hardening line appeared to be Rural Solidarity, the 600,000-member independent farmers' union that has been seeking official recognition since September. Farm leaders had taken heart when the Supreme Court deferred a final decision on the group's legal status last month. That optimism now seems ill-founded. In his tough speech to party members, Kania declared: "We register our categorical opposition to all attempts at inciting the countryside, at sowing anarchy, or creating a political opposition." Among the organizers of the new farmers' movement, Kania charged, were "those who make no secret of their antisocialist or--to put it bluntly --counterrevolutionary designs."

Even as Warsaw held the line against militant workers and farmers, there were signs that it was taking some reform promises seriously. The government last week published a draft program for sweeping economic change that would put greater emphasis on the profit motive, consult worker councils on management decisions and grant more autonomy to individual factories. It would also make concessions to the basic demands of the country's private farmers, who own about 75% of the land and produce 80% of Poland's domestically grown food supply. Among other things, the program called for higher prices for agricultural produce, equal access with state-run farms to machinery, fertilizer and supplies, and new regulations allowing private farmers to increase their land holdings more easily.

To bring about any improvement in Poland's troubled economy, the government must first win the trust of a cynical and disgruntled public. This is obviously no easy task, but there seemed to be some grounds for compromise. Before his departure for Rome last week. Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa told reporters: "We do not want a strike and will be looking for better solutions." Another spokesman for the unions described the boycott of Saturday work this way: "Not as a confrontation, but as a first stage leading to an agreement." qed

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