Word: gdansk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cheers of hundreds of sympathizers gathered below the five-story concrete building, two workers proudly hoisted a new red-and-white banner that proclaimed, INDEPENDENT AND SELF-GOVERNING TRADE UNION OF GDANSK. Inside, the wood-paneled hall buzzed with excitement. A young organizer from a tractor factory near Warsaw boastfully announced that 50% to 80% of the workers in his sector had signed up for the new unions. A burly miner from the Silesian coal fields, on the other hand, complained of official harassment against efforts to organize his mine. The familiar figure of Lech Walesa, 37, the triumphant leader...
Such were the growing pains of an independent labor movement taking root in hostile ground. The gathering in Gdansk last week was the first nationwide meeting of some 150 organizers, representing new independent unions throughout the country, come together to stretch their new muscle and air their concerns. The convention-like meeting, in fact, was only one sign of the seething activity that was continuing to take place in Poland after two months of labor turmoil. "The Poland of today is not the same as before July 1980," conceded a top government official. "It will be impossible to return...
...Warsaw does expect to absorb the free trade unions, the defiant delegates who met in Gdansk last week promise to put up a stiff fight. Speaker after speaker denounced attempts by factory managers or local authorities to block the formation of independent unions. The most commonly cited tactic: threatening to cut off the social benefits of workers who join the new organizations. Others mocked promises of internal reform by official union leaders anxious to hold on to their original membership. Still others blasted the government for withholding information about the new unions in the press. Said a bus driver from...
...foremost trading partner and a major creditor ($550 million in hard-currency loans since May), the Soviet Union is a logical source. Warsaw accordingly dispatched a delegation to Moscow to seek assistance and explain the strike agreements. Headed by First Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski, the man who negotiated the Gdansk accord, the Polish envoys met first with Soviet trade officials. Jagielski then held a private meeting with Mikhail Suslov, the Soviet Politburo's hard-lining ideologist; diplomats in Moscow had no doubt that Suslov expressed strong disapproval of the independent trade union concept. The question undoubtedly came...
...major test for Party Leader Stanislaw Kania will be the way in which he handles the Gdansk agreement between workers and the government. The accord, vaguely worded in some key places, gives him a lot of maneuvering room, as these excerpts from the official text show...