Word: walesa
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...mouth. This time, however, instead of a rousing exhortation to militancy, his message was a somber admonition: to curtail the spread of further strikes across his nation and give the government the necessary breath a while. "It is not good to have Poland terrorized," the strike leader, Lech Walesa, told the crowd. "The people must have food. Poland can only last for a few more days under these conditions." Then, with a more characteristic tone of defiance, he added, "If we don't get results in a few days, then let the strikes spread...
...party-controlled Central Council of Trade Unions. Instead of the current system, under which the outgoing representatives propose 85% of the candidates, the new vote would be open to an unlimited number of candidates-including the current strike leaders. The workers in Gdansk remained unimpressed. Said Lech Walesa: "We are not politicians. We are not interested in politics. We want our own trade union...
...negotiating teams were as different as they could be. On one side sat Walesa, dressed in baggy coat and sweater, flanked by a coterie of advisers. Among them were a number of thoroughly nonproletarian, politically minded intellectuals who have been advising the strikers. Other leaders of the Interfactory Strike Committee sat on rows of benches behind their negotiators, including the prim and bespectacled Anna Walentynowicz, a militant crane operator whose recent dismissal had helped spark the shipyard strike...
Despite their inexperience at collective bargaining, Walesa and his comrades proved to be formidable adversaries. "The amazing thing about the strikers is not only their incredible discipline and excellent organization, but also their leaders' shrewdness and sophisticated negotiating tactics," marveled a West German Chancellery expert. Before broaching any real substance in the talks, in fact, the strikers forced the government to accept a precondition: restoration of the city's telephone links to the outside, which had been severed in an effort to isolate Gdansk. The strikers promptly used their newly restored communications to coordinate their actions with other...
...have raised a typical shipyard worker's monthly pay to $385, more than twice the national average of $172 for other industries, in fact. But the decision was overturned by the rank-and-file, who refused to "betray the other strikers." In an abrupt about-face, Strike Leader Lech Walesa, a 37-year-old electrician, told shipyard workers: "We must fight alongside them until...