Word: shipyards
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 became a strike leader at the Lenin Shipyard during the 1970 food price riots. Fired for his attempts at labor organizing in 1976, he found work in a machine repair shop and helped found the underground Baltic Free Trade Unions Movement. He was sent as a delegate to the official union elections in 1979, but was outraged to find the local party secretary controlling the vote. "Why have I come here, to elect or to applaud?" he demanded. The answer: an unceremonious sacking...
...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...