Word: shipyarders
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...particular threat to 40,000 former white-collar employees of the now outlawed Solidarity organization, such as printers, journalists and clerical staff, many of whom are still without jobs. It also threatens blue-collar workers like those at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, about 50 of whom were fired after an attempted strike last month. Many of these workers have also received "wolf tickets," or bad-conduct reports, making it hard for them to get new jobs...
...makeshift sign hanging over the entrance to the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, but the message in black letters was plain and specific: SOLIDARITY LIVES. Three days before, Poland's parliament had passed a law formally abolishing the independent trade union, yet, as the simple banner at the union's Baltic birthplace made eloquently clear, Solidarity supporters were not yet ready to bury all the aspirations and hope that had been inspired by the reform movement, however powerful the suasions and muscle of Poland's military regime. In Gdansk and other cities across the country last week...
...defiance and hope recalled the exhilarating mood of August 1980, when Solidarity was born. In recent months Poles had staged symbolic work stoppages and street demonstrations to protest the imposition of martial law last December. This time the angry workers arriving for the first shift at the Lenin shipyard wanted action: they called a wildcat strike. Before long, Gate No. 2, scene of so much activity two years earlier as Solidarity grew into a force that shook the Communist bloc, was once again covered with red-and-white national banners, papal portraits and flowers. As strikers in drab blue overalls...
...troubled port. Convoys of police and ZOMO, the paramilitary police force, roared into Gdansk, turning the city into an armed camp. When the strikes stretched on for two days, riot police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse crowds that gathered on the square outside the shipyard. As flames lighted the night sky, police battled youths who blockaded streets with bonfires and trash cans...
Under attack in the streets and besieged in the shipyard, the strikers had no leader of the caliber of the imprisoned Lech Walesa to organize an effective challenge to Warsaw's might. Working through clandestine committees, union activists drafted a list of demands for the government, calling for the release of Walesa and other internees, an end to martial law, and the revival of Solidarity. Without a formal strike committee to coordinate activities, the initiative faltered...