Word: coal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...other hand, Bruce Cook, Democratic state central committeeman for St. Clair County, recalls a coal miner telling him that "once a guy makes $30,000 a year, he buys a riding lawn mower and votes Republican." These voters, many of them Reagan Democrats, are conservative on social issues. Cook admits that Dukakis' veto of a compulsory Pledge of Allegiance to the flag is not going to help. But he counters by asserting, "Dan Quayle really hurts Bush with these people. They are macho, patriotic people who are working really hard to send their kids to college," qualities they...
...From the coal mines of Silesia, where the protest began the previous week, the strike movement last week reached the Lenin shipyard, Solidarity's birthplace in the Baltic port of Gdansk. For the second time in less than five months, militant young workers hoisted scarlet-and-white SOLIDARNOSC banners across the main entrance to the shipyard, while outside a cordon of militia swiftly sealed off the area. From inside the gates, a familiar face with walrus mustache addressed a crowd of cheering workers. "The most important demand is the revival of Solidarity," said Nobel Peace Prizewinner Lech Walesa...
...Only four months ago, during a round of nationwide walkouts by 20,000 workers, Walesa led a shutdown at the Lenin shipyard. After a nine-day sit-in, the workers accepted a demoralizing surrender. This time, though, the core of worker protest lay with the nation's 450,000 coal miners in Silesia. They are the prime motor of Poland's tottering economy, firing its aging industrial plant and providing $1 billion in precious hard-currency exports...
...come to us," a traditional labor call for support, the fervor that swept the nation in 1980 was missing. Said a young doctor in Gdansk: "People don't believe these strikes can change much -- in fact, they think they will mainly help make things worse. There will be no coal for winter, no this, no that...
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...