Word: gierek
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...violent food price riots broke out in the grimy Baltic seaport of Gdansk, spread rapidly to other regions and threatened to sweep the country. The government's brutal response left hundreds of workers dead and forced the resignation of Communist Party Leader Wladyslaw Gomulka. His successor, Edward Gierek, had good cause to reflect upon those events last week. The workers of Gdansk were up in arms again: 16,000 angry employees of the Lenin Shipyard went on strike and occupied the sprawling complex. They were soon joined by bus drivers and workers at some 17 other factories...
...conferring a de facto legitimacy on the right to strike. Hours after the Gdansk action began, the state-controlled press reported that the government had offered a $40-a-month pay increase, a sum the strikers rejected. But official patience appeared to fray as the strike spread. Shortly after Gierek returned from a visit to the Soviet Union, Premier Edward Babiuch hinted ominously on national television that Poland's "unbreakable allies" might have to act unless "we can overcome these problems...
...outspoken Catholic Church. They have also learned to live with an agricultural system that, unlike the Soviet model, leaves 75% of the country's farms in private hands. Last week, under pressure from a wave of peaceful but illegal strikes in factories across the country, Party Leader Edward Gierek seemed to be heading toward another ideological compromise: de facto recognition of an amorphous independent trade-union movement...
...butchershops. When Polish workers get angry, the regime has learned to take them seriously. Ten years ago, the government used force to halt strikes in the Baltic ports against high food prices. The ensuing bloodshed-hundreds of workers were killed-led to the downfall of Party Chief Wladyslaw Gomulka. Gierek, who replaced him, prudently called off another attempt to raise meat prices four years ago. This time Gierek has chosen to defuse the confrontation by granting wage increases of up to 15%, while maintaining the higher meat prices...
...defense of Giscard's mission, French spokesmen argued that it had been designed to re-establish a vital line of communications between the West and the U.S.S.R. The five-hour summit in Wilanow Palace-with Polish Communist Party Boss Edward Gierek as host-had produced no perceptible relaxation of East-West tension, much less any Soviet concession on Afghanistan. But the French argued that at least they had set a precedent that might lead to more fruitful talks in the future. French officials said that preparations for the meeting had been kept secret because Brezhnev, whose health is notoriously...