Word: shipyards
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Most Polish workers would be happy to have two weeks off in the prune holiday month of August, but not Electrician Lech Walesa. When officials at the Gdansk shipyard turned down a request from the former Solidarity trade-union leader for vacation in July or September and offered him August instead, Walesa decided to play hooky. Accompanied by his wife Danuta and three of their seven children, he climbed into the family's white Volkswagen minibus and set off for Sokolow Podlaski, a small town 55 miles from Warsaw, to go fishing. He claimed that his holiday request...
...intention of retiring from public life, even though Pope John Paul II was rumored to have suggested such a move during his recent visit to Poland. As all Poles are well aware, Aug. 31 marks the third anniversary of the signing of the agreement at the Lenin shipyard that created Solidarity. The military regime, apparently fearful that Walesa's mere presence at the yard might encourage a wave of antigovernment demonstrations, preferred that he be out of town. Walesa is just as determined to be on the scene, and for that reason, persuaded another worker to trade his July...
Walesa's act of defiance could cost him his job repairing battery-powered vehicles, a post he was given in April following his release from eleven months' detention. Officials at the Gdansk shipyard went to considerable lengths last week to play down the implications of the former union leader's absence. But when Walesa failed to show up for the third day in a row, making him technically liable for dismissal, shipyard officials suggested they might take disciplinary action...
...merely a "private citizen" in the government's eyes, was among the millions of Poles riveted to their television sets as the Pope arrived in Poland. Walesa spent most of the week in his home town of Gdansk, where he had returned to his job at the Lenin shipyards two months ago after spending nearly a year in detention. When Walesa asked permission from the shipyard management to take a day off to meet the Pope, the request was denied. Instead, a group of policemen turned up at his apartment; in an apparent effort to intimidate him, they followed...
...girls riding on the shoulders of their fathers flashed the victory sign. If the procession, at times, had the air of a carnival, there were also moments of solemnity as the marchers joined in a chorus of O God, Who Has Protected Poland, a nationalist hymn sung by the shipyard workers who went on strike in Gdansk in August...