Word: shipyards
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...strike life was a dirty brick building in the center of the sprawling shipyard. A press center inside issued journalists' credentials, and worker-translators wore yellow armbands indicating which foreign languages they spoke. In the conference hall, representatives of striking factories sat at four long tables. Tape recorders took down the proceedings, to be replayed for comrades back in other factories. From a corner table, women in white smocks distributed sausages, cheese and sandwiches...
...Jacewicz, a technician at the shipyard, explained why this strike was more effective than the riotous protests of 1970: "We were not well prepared in 1970. Our mistake was that we left the shipyard, and the clash with the police occurred. Now we are united and well organized." Gesturing at a Danish laborer who was pledging the support of the Danish trade unions, he added another reason for the strike's success. Said Jacewicz: "We have the support of the whole world...
...born speaker," Lech Walesa shouted to hundreds of people gathered outside the gates of the Lenin Shipyard. "I'm just a simple worker, so forgive me if I use simple language." Simple it may be, but it is the language the striking workers of Poland's Baltic coast understand and respond to. In the three weeks since the Gdansk strike began, Walesa (pronounced Vah-wen-sah) has become an authentic hero. Wherever he walked across the idle yard, workers would break into spontaneous applause. A few would run up for his autograph. Each evening when he climbed...
...with a slight build, a mop of brown hair overhanging his bulbous nose, and a bushy mustache, he wears outsize clothes that look like hand-me-downs from much larger brothers. Nor is he accustomed to prominence. Walesa was working as an electrician in the Lenin Shipyard in 1970, when bloody riots broke out over food prices and prompted him to join the yard's strike committee. Just before the recurrence of rioting in 1976, he was fired for criticizing national economic policies. In 1979 he joined a group of activist workers who called themselves the Baltic Free Trade...
...exhibited from the start. At a mass meeting early in the strike, a man rose and identified himself as a member of the local writers' union and pleaded for understanding for Communist Party Chief Edward Gierek. When a bona fide member of the writers' union and one shipyard worker denounced the man as an impostor and provocateur, a group of workers backed him against the wall. Walesa grabbed the microphone and warned, "If he is hit or even touched, I will give up the leadership." He then called for 20 workers to escort the man from the hall...