Strikers continue to ignore calls to halt

Press, 3 November 1981, Page 8

Strikers continue to ignore calls to halt

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw Strikes affecting some 250,000 Polish workers were set to continue despite calls by the Sejm (Parliament) and ledgers of the Solidarity free-trade union for an immediate' halt to industrial unrest.

The Sejm declared on Saturday that unless strikes ended it would consider a bill authorising the Government to take what Communist Party leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, termed extraordinary measures. Solidarity’s presidium has called for an end to uncontrolled stoppages. Its national commission will meet in Gdansk today to debate taking disciplinary action against wildcat strikes. But militants in at least four major regional centres said yesterday that their strikes would continue until grievances were met. The disputes were mainly about strike pay. • The official news agency. Pap, said strikes in the sulphur and steel industries in the Tarnobrzeg-Stalowa wola area of south-east Poland were costing 128 million zloties (about. $4.7 million) a day. The strikes were also be-

ginning to have an effect on related industries. Pap said. Poland’s biggest fertiliser factory has. sent an appeal to the sulphur-mine workers saying they will have to halt production if the Tarnobrzeg strike continued indefinitely. In Zyrardow south-west of Warsaw, a sit-in by 12.000 textile workers. mostly women, in 16 factories entered its twentieth day. Textile workers at nearby Skierniewice were also striking.

Notice of intention to strike has been given in almost a dozen other areas from the Baltic port of Szczecin to steel foundries in Radom, south. of Warsaw. The attitudetof the authorities towards the strikes if they were not brought to a speedy halt would clearly be crucial to relations with Solidarity. The union itself, however, may bring sufficient influence to bear after today's meeting to force a breathing space in Poland's labour unrest.

The Gdansk meeting will bring together the 107 members of Solidarity’s national commission.

Across the country on Sunday Poles queued for buses, taxis, or walked in many

cases several kilometres laden with flowers and wreaths to cemeteries to mark All Saints’ Day. Even those with , private cars and petrol were often unable to park close to the graveyards. In Warsaw, crowds flocked to the city’s Praga Cemetery, the largest in Europe, with more than a million graves. The air was filled with smoke and the smell of wax from thousands of candles burning in glass jars at gravesides. At the military section of the city’s Powazki Cemetery, several hundred people clustered around a wooden cross to hear a priest say mass for 4300 Army officers massacred at Katyn during the Second World War.

■ The date and responsibility for Katyn are disputed. The Soviet Union says it was carried out by Nazi Germans. but many Poles believe Soviet troops were responsible. In 1941 Katyn was occupied by German troops, but in 1940 it was still under Soviet rule. The Powazki cross bears the words "Katyn, 1940." For years the word Katyn was taboo in Poland. A stone cross erected in July mysteriously vanished hours later.