Poland moves to curb strikes

Press, 25 August 1988, Page 10

Poland moves to curb strikes

NZPA-Reuter

Warsaw

Polish authorities have acted to curb the country’s worst wave of strikes since 1981 as the Government announced that a Parliamentary panel will review efforts to improve the economy.

Officials in the southern mining town of Jastrzebie imposed a curfew, specially empowered by the Interior Ministry, and prosecutors in Katowice, Gdansk and Szczecin started inquiries into illegal strike leadership. The unrest hitting Poland’s vital coal industry began nine days ago in Jastrzebie, near the border with Czechoslovakia, in a mineral-rich region where at least a dozen mines ar? on strike. Sources in the banned Solidarity trade union said workers at Andaluzja mine had ended a strike but others at Walbrzyck began a strike. The sources reported strikes at four other mines but these could not be confirmed. Some 130 miners at the July Manifesto mine’ in Jastrzebie barricaded themselves in the mine to protest at measures announced by the Interior Minister, Czeslaw Kiszczak, on Monday,

miners there said. Mr Kiszczak has authorised summary arrests and increased a militia presence at striking enterprises. The strikers are demanding official recognition of Solidarity and more pay. Their action has already caused a loss of SUS 6 million (SNZ9.4 million) from coal exports, the official PAP news agency said. Such exports are Poland’s leading means of paying off a SUS3B billion (SNZS9 billion) foreign debt. A Government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, accused Solidarity of holding the nation at “strike gunpoint” and ruled out talks with the Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa. Mr Urban acknowledged that the Government was partly to blame for hardships faced by Poles and said that a special Parliamentary commission would begin a two-day session on August

31 to review plans for economic reform. The Communist Party Politburo met to discuss the labour unrest, Polish television reported, without giving details of the regular weekly session. Mr Walesa, inside the Lenin Shipyard in the Baltic port of Gdansk, said measures to curb the strikes . would achieve nothing in the long run and only delay official recognition of the union, which was suppressed under martial law in Decembver, 1981. Solidarity’s Commission of Intervention, which defends workers against official prosecution for pro-union activity, condemned the moves to end the latest wave of strikes. “It is not the strikes that are illegal. What is illegal and contradictory to international obligations is the attitude of the authorities which deny Polish workers the basic citizen’s right — the right to have independent trade

unions,” the commission said in a statement. Some 2000 workers in all four shipyards in Gdansk and three of its four loading sectors were on strike, along with a similar number of port labourers who stopped work in the north-western city of Szczecin, strike leaders said. The Gdansk regional prosecutor’s office summoned 13 people in connection with its strikes inquiry, PAP said. Summary procedures were introduced for some Warsaw court cases. Fifty-nine people have been detained nationwide, according to Mr Urban. Among those held in the western city of Wroclaw were the prominent Solidarity activists, Josef Pinior and Jolanta Skiba, opposition sources said. Local officials met Wroclaw’s Roman Catholic Cardinal, Henryk Gulbinowicz, and said they stressed a need for Church-State efforts towards social peace.