Strike expected to paralyse turbulent Polish province

Press, 10 February 1981, Page 8

Strike expected to paralyse turbulent Polish province

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw Workers began a general strike in the south-western province of Jelenia Gora today despite an agreement to reopen negotiations between their leaders and the Government, union officials said. Local officials of the independent trade union, Solidarity, which claims the allegiance of some 80 per cent of Poland’s workforce, said they planned to bring all but essential services in Jelenia Gora to a standstill after failing to reach agreement with a Government delegation led by the Deputy Regional Affairs Minister (Mr Jan Jablonski). The stoppage would affect some 450 factories in the south-west province near the Czechoslovak border, they said. Poland’s Communist Party chief, Stanislaw Kania, was expected to preside over a crucial meeting of the pol-icy-making Central Committee late yesterday which seemed likely to produce a heated debate between hardliners and reformers over

ways of handling the' country’s restive labour movement. Marian Kunicki, a Solidarity official in the province, said the Government negotiating team had adjourned the talks to consult the central authorities in Warsaw but had later told unionists that they would not be resumed. No date was set for further talks. Earlier, another Solidarity official said basic agreement had been reached on most issues, including the union’s demand for the resignation of the Trade Union Minister (Mr Stanislav/ Ciosek). He added that Solidarity’s leader, Lech Walesa, had tried to avert the strike by offering a compromise on the future of the Interior Ministry sanatorium reserved for Interior Ministry officials. Mr Walesa suggested that the sanatorium, apparently the main stumbling block to an agreement, should be used by the public until 1984, when a new hospital was built. But by late yesterday

there was no indication that the offer would be accepted. Workers in four neighbouring provinces said they were preparing for strike action later in the week if the stalemate in Jelenia Gora was not settled. The dispute over the right of private farmers to set up their own trade union was also likely to be high on the agenda of yesterday’s Central Committee meeting, convened a day before the Supreme Court was due to rule on the is:ue. Solidarity has threatened more strikes if a Higa Court verdict due today goes against the farmers’ campaign for their own union, which received a formal blessing last week from Poland’s influential Roman Catholic .. primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. At the week-end, a police magazine accused the dissident workers Self-Defence Committee, K.0.R., of activities hostile to the State and the country’s Soviet bloc allies.