Word: gierek
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...1890s, when the city's textile workers staged violent demonstrations against the Russian czarist occupiers. Last week Lodz once again showed its rebellious spirit as 10,000 textile workers, most of them women, went on strike. Their action was a warning to the regime of Party Leader Edward Gierek, who succeeded Wladyslaw Gomulka in December after bloody workers' demonstrations against higher food prices and a cut in earnings...
...Gierek's tactics in settling the December riots helped create the Lodz situation. To placate workers in Poland's big Baltic shipyards, Gierek did what no Communist leader in history had ever dared to do: instead of crushing the protesters, he gave in to their demands. Bargaining personally with the strikers, Gierek agreed to rescind a complicated new bonus system that workers feared would reduce their take-home pay. He also raised the minimum wage and pensions. But Gierek held fast on one crucial point: he refused to cancel an average 17% increase in food prices...
Soviet Help. Gierek's maneuver seemed to defuse the dangerous situation. But then the Lodz workers struck, demanding a 16% wage increase and better working conditions. Gierek sent Premier Piotr Jaroszewicz and three other Politburo members to reason with the workers. After several sessions, including one that lasted until 4 a.m., the officials returned to Warsaw with no settlement in sight...
...Gierek faced a difficult decision. To break the strike would alienate workers and strengthen the position of his chief rival, General Mieczyslaw Moczar, the tough law-and-order security chief who crushed a 1947 Lodz strike in which two workers died and 80 were wounded. The Soviet Union came to Gierek's rescue by offering an estimated $500 million in credits and grain shipments. Buoyed by Soviet help, Gierek was able to cancel the price increases. The Lodz workers went back to work and the rest of the country remained quiet...
...Gierek promised that the workers would be paid for their strike days "if you fulfill your quota." His most popular promise was to draw a clearer line between party and state functions, thus enabling more nonparty members to hold high government and industrial posts. In a major concession, the government announced that a new incentive system that had helped spark the riots will be postponed and possibly revised...