Word: lech
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...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...
...ghost of Solidarity was even more pervasive at Gorbachev's other destination, the shipbuilding city of Szczecin, on the Baltic Sea. Along with former Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa and his supporters in the city of Gdansk, the 8,000 workers of Szczecin's Adolf Warski shipyard were instrumental in + founding the independent labor union. Speaking to 3,000 workers in the shipyard's cavernous hull-assembly building, a solemn Gorbachev avoided any direct mention of Solidarity, whose underground leadership had earlier issued a statement praising his reforms in the Soviet Union. The closest he came was to congratulate workers...
Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa, who had feared that the workers' revolt was ill timed and had joined it only reluctantly, admitted that the finale amounted to a "step back." The government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski announced plans to speed up Poland's economic restructuring program. But in the sullen aftermath of the country's crushed labor rebellion, few expected the measures to make much difference...
...night, more than 2,000 riot police and elite commandos routed several hundred occupying strikers at the Nowa Huta steel mill near Cracow, reportedly injuring at least 40 of them. Meanwhile, police surrounded the more recently occupied Gdansk shipyard, isolating a strike force of about 1,000, which included Lech Walesa, legendary founder of the outlawed Solidarity independent trade union...
Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa quickly endorsed the apparently spontaneous protests on behalf of his outlawed organization. He and fellow Solidarity activists are in a delicate position: they fear the consequences of massive strikes but are eager to play a role in any new round of negotiations between the workers and the regime. Conceding that huge across-the-board wage increases would undermine the already tottering economy, Walesa called for genuine economic and political reforms instead...