Word: gdansk
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...secret-ballot elections to the party-controlled Central Council of Trade Unions. Instead of the current system, under which the outgoing representatives propose 85% of the candidates, the new vote would be open to an unlimited number of candidates-including the current strike leaders. The workers in Gdansk remained unimpressed. Said Lech Walesa: "We are not politicians. We are not interested in politics. We want our own trade union...
...With scores of Western newsmen looking on through a glass wall, the two teams faced each other over a long, narrow wooden table. A battery of microphones sent their voices echoing out over the shipyard's public address system; portions of the extraordinary negotiations were even broadcast over Gdansk radio...
...sophisticated negotiating tactics," marveled a West German Chancellery expert. Before broaching any real substance in the talks, in fact, the strikers forced the government to accept a precondition: restoration of the city's telephone links to the outside, which had been severed in an effort to isolate Gdansk. The strikers promptly used their newly restored communications to coordinate their actions with other strike centers and even dispatched delegations to proselytize in the interior of the country. Soon new strikes were reported in such cities as Wroclaw, Lodz and Rzeszow, raising the ante and putting added pressure on the Jagielski...
...every shop and factory, red-and-white Polish flags fluttered in the faint breeze off the Baltic Sea, giving Gdansk the festive look of a holiday. But traffic was only a trickle of the normal midday rush. At high noon on a working day, the streets were almost empty of people. The only crowd converged on the Lenin Shipyard, the center of the strike and the focal point of the nationwide crisis. TIME Eastern Europe Correspondent Barry Kalb visited the strike scene...
...workers of Gdansk have taken possession of their own city, in defiance of everything the world knows as Communism. Bakeries, though they continued operating to keep bread on the tables, flew the flag out of solidarity. A taxi driver said that although supplies were low, people supported the strike: "Even when there is no strike, there's little in the shops. They must not let it fail...