Word: walesa
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...shipyard workers voted to end their strike following an emotional appeal from Lech Walesa, leader of the outlawed Solidarity union and an electrician at the facility. They were followed by steel-mill employees in Stalowa Wola and coal-mine workers in Jastrzebie, where the latest round of labor troubles began on Aug. 16. The last to settle were port and public transport employees in Szczecin, who abandoned their strikes around noon on Saturday...
...Walesa acted just hours after he achieved a breakthrough in his relations with the Communist regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. He held three hours of talks in Warsaw with Interior Minister General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the first time senior Polish officials have granted Walesa a role in the nation's affairs since 1981, when they imposed martial law, suppressed Solidarity and put the union leader in detention. Kiszczak said if the strikes were halted, the regime would set up a round table for serious negotiations on the economy, presumably including workers' demands for better wages, housing and food stocks...
...Walesa risked his credibility by calling for an end to the strikes, which had attracted broad sympathy. But in return, Walesa obtained a pledge from Kiszczak that could revive the union leader's power and the diminishing influence of Solidarity: the regime agreed to discuss during the round-table talks lifting the ban on Solidarity, which Walesa founded in 1980 as the first independent trade union in the Communist bloc...
...banners across the main entrance to the shipyard, while outside a cordon of militia swiftly sealed off the area. From inside the gates, a familiar face with walrus mustache addressed a crowd of cheering workers. "The most important demand is the revival of Solidarity," said Nobel Peace Prizewinner Lech Walesa. "It is needed in these difficult times to fight for reforms, design them and introduce them...
...some ways, the strike scene was sadly familiar. Only four months ago, during a round of nationwide walkouts by 20,000 workers, Walesa led a shutdown at the Lenin shipyard. After a nine-day sit-in, the workers accepted a demoralizing surrender. This time, though, the core of worker protest lay with the nation's 450,000 coal miners in Silesia. They are the prime motor of Poland's tottering economy, firing its aging industrial plant and providing $1 billion in precious hard-currency exports...