Word: shipyard
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...hate strikes," Union Leader Lech Walesa told a group of journalists last week. That remarkable statement by the organizer of last summer's mass shipyard strike was symptomatic of the conspicuous spirit of conciliation that both labor and government strained to maintain as Poland's year of peril came to a close. Communist Party Boss Stanislaw Kania demonstratively placed wreaths on monuments that had been erected in the northern port cities of Gdansk and Gdynia to honor workers killed by police and troops in 1970. Kania's gesture was of high symbolic importance, since it signified...
...proletariat" would one day be shaken to its core by a son of the working class. Yet in 1980 an unemployed Polish electrician, Lech Walesa, rose from the masses to become one of the Communist world's most charismatic figures. When he scaled the gates of Lenin Shipyard in the Baltic port of Gdansk last August, Walesa did far more than seize the reins of an angry strike movement. To millions of Polish workers, he became the symbol of their dreams for a better life. In the process, he helped launch a bold experiment to bend the rigid lines...
...from his first appearance in the striking shipyard last August, Walesa showed an instinctive ability to inspire crowds and win their trust. Standing atop the shipyard gates, a microphone in one hand, the other raised in a clenched-fist salute, he mesmerized his audiences with a mixture of folksy quips and deadly serious admonitions...
...Walesa's fortunes changed astonishingly when he scaled the gate of Lenin Shipyard last Aug. 14 to seize the helm of an angry strike movement. He became the workers' natural choice to head the independent union that emerged from that historic confrontation. Looking back over his long struggles, he remarks: "They have been tough years, tough on my wife and children. But I couldn't give...
...unionizing mission has brought a few temporal rewards. He now draws a union salary of $333 a month -roughly equal to a shipyard worker's. He was able to trade his former two-room flat for a new six-room apartment in a suburban row of bristling concrete towers; his wardrobe has grown from one to five suits; friends keep him supplied with a seemingly endless stream of domestic and imported cigarettes. "You're going to get the way all the big bureaucrats get-mark my word," scolded a woman delegate at a recent union meeting. Walesa smiled...