Last strikers go back to work at Polish coalmines

Press, 6 September 1980, Page 9

Last strikers go back to work at Polish coalmines

NZPA Warsaw The last striking coalminers in southern Poland have reached “complete agreement” with the Government and will return to the pits today,; Warsaw Radio has announced. The official radio said representatives of the miners at the Szombierki, Dimitrow, and Bobrek collieries in Upper Silesia signed a protocol with the Government negotiating commission headed by the Minister of Mines (Mr Wlodzimierz Leicak).

Most Polish miners returned to work on Thursday after- winning Government pledges of independent unions and work-free weekends, informed sources reported. But an estimated 15,000 men at Bytom, 10km north of Katowice, stayed on strike. Reliable unofficial sources said.-they were demanding changes in management; at the three collieries. The miners-.were the final hold-outs of a nation-wide wave of strikes that started in Baltic port cities ' where militant shipyard workers won promises of independent unions, economic reforms, and an easing of censorship. In Washington, the American Federation of Labour — Congress of Industrial Organisations labour federation established a special fund to help Polish wbrkers enlarge the independent uninns. The Soviet Union yesterday issued a new attack on

Western trade-union help to! Poland and accused Western unions and Governments of meddling in Polish affairs. The Soviet denunciations carried by the official news I agency, Tass, did not men-j [tion the A.F.L.-C.1.0. plan. ; Poland has announced that i the Soviet. Union and other Soviet bloc countries are granting economic aid to help the country out of its difficulties. The Government said the Soviet Union was providing a financial credit to enable Poland to buy needed items 1 in the West. The Polish news agency said more consumer goods vould be imported from Czechoslvakia and East Germany under agreements' signed this week. Poland moved to impose price controls on food and consumer goods in an effort to show restive workers thati reforms were being carried! out.

The newspaper “Trybuna Ludu” also announced that [ Polish-made items such as ! lambskin coats, electric ap- [ pliances, and building mats erials would be withdrawn from hard-currency shops to • meet worker demands.: ■ Baltic .shipyard workers ■had complained they could not buy Polish-made luxury ■ goods because such items - were sold only for Western • money in the special shop's. i There was a report, from i Wroclaw, 288 km south-west : < Warsaw, that the first meeting of a new union has been held. i Wroclaw Radio, in a

I broadcast monitored in London, said it was an “information meeting” on the pul poses of the new unions and was’ addressed by Jerzj Piorkowski, chairman of the joint strike committee in Wroclaw. The official Polish news agency reported on Thursday that miners throughput Silesia were back at work after the end of their six-day strike by 250,000 coalminers and workers. The miners’ strike started as the embattled Polish re'gime of the Communist Party leader, Edward Gierek, was settling . the strike t>y 600,000 workers in northern and central Poland: ■ ' '• Informed sources said that the Silesian strikes — involving workers at 32 mines and 27-related enterprises — were called to win specific concessions not 4 covered iin the Government agreeIments with Baltic shipyard workers. Full details of the concessions made to miners have not been made public. The prolonged 'labour /dispute prompted the Polish Army newspaper, “Zoinierz Wolnosci,” to declare yesterday that soldiers could not remain indifferent to those who sought to weaken the unity of the nation.

“The morale and political ilriity of the community is one of the basic sources of strength ,0f our military,” the paper said. “Therefore, whoever weakens that unity attacks the defensive part of the country and soldiers cannot. remain indifferent.”