World Notes POLAND

Anniversaries are revered in Poland, but it was apparently just coincidence last week that workers launched a wave of strikes close to the eighth birthday of the outlawed Solidarity trade union. The stoppages crippled ten coal mines in Silesia and paralyzed dock facilities in the Baltic seaport of Szczecin. Although the strikes were not organized by Solidarity leaders, Lech Walesa, head of the union, warned that workers at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk would join the disruptions early this week. The strikers' demands included legalization of Solidarity, as well as higher wages and better working conditions.

The protests were the first since last spring, when strikers plunged the country into the most widespread labor unrest since the tumult that spawned Solidarity in 1980. In response, authorities initially cut off food supplies to workers occupying a mine near Jastrzebie. But by week's end, as the unrest spread, the government's National Defense Committee threatened "appropriate decisions" and joint units of soldiers and military police patrolled Silesia.