Polish strike warning

Press, 2 June 1982, Page 9

Polish strike warning

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw Fugitive Solidarity leaders in Warsaw and . the southwestern industrial centre of Wroclaw have told workers to prepare for a general strike to force concessions from Poland’s military rulers. In underground bulletins circulating in Warsaw, a committee of union officials said protest action so far had’ failed to force the authorities to "back off from repression and pursue the concept of national agreement." In a statement also read on the clandestine Radio Solidarity in Warsaw yesterday. they said factory

workers should be asked how and when they favoured staging a general strike. Cooperation between plants should be stepped up. it said. The statement, a communique of a meeting of underground Solidarity officials in the capital late last week, did not suggest when such a strike should take place. A similar bulletin in Wroclaw called on people to prepare for a strike in the Lower Silesia area. Solidarity activists placed an inscribed marble stone in a Warsaw square yesterday in memory of nine people killed in a clash between

miners and riot police in the south-east during the first week of martial law. The police made no immediate move to remove the stone, which bore the names of eight men and one woman and the inscription: "To the miners of Wujek fallen on December 16. 1981.” In one of the most audacious acts of underground defiance to date, the red and whte flag of the suspended trade union was placed by the grey marble stone and a wreath bore the union’s name and the words: "To those who have fallen for the freedom and independence of workers.”