The circumstances that resulted in Edward Gierek's team coming to power in Poland in 1970 meant that the Gierek regime had very limited maneuvering room. Gierek became first secretary of the Polish United Workers Party (the Polish Communist Party) following the Baltic Coast shipyard strikes of December 1970. In February 1971 a massive strike by Lodz textile workers forced the government to rescind the food price increases that had sparked the shipyard strikes.
For one thing, the well-known shortcomings in agricultural production required some form of rationing in order to respond to the requirements of the market, but this was not possible due to the workers' protests. In addition, the wage increases granted in December 1970 and January 1971 further exacerbated the pressures on the market, since the lack of available wie markel, consumer durables led the workers to use their wage increases to increase their food consumption.
Credits From Abroad and Rapid Growth
Faced with this situation, the bureaucracy, which was confident that the capitalist economic boom of the 1970s would last forever, launched the country on a race toward industrialization. Tens of thousands of licenses were purchased abroad to modernize Polish industry.
At the same time, the domestic market was supplied through imports of both food and consumer durables from the West. Billions of dollars in loans were arranged with capitalist banks.
thought that the
The bureaucracy growth of Polish production and exports would make it possible to rapidly repay the loans and make Poland into a trading rapid growth of the Polish economy for several years (between 10 and 15 percent per year) had caused an uncontrolled increase in imports.
In 1976, foreign indebtedness reached $12 billion, equivalent to the value of a whole year's exports. At the same time, the growth rate of agricultural production was only around 3 to 4 percent per year. And the fear of strikes led local bureaucrats to grant big wage increases. Between 1970 and 1976 average wages of industrial workers more than doubled. The pressures on the food market thus increased further. The Workers' First No'
In June 1976, when it was clear that the policy of accelerated industrial development had simply increased various pressures on the economy, and when it was clear that the capitalist economic crisis was not a passing phenomenon, the authorities tried to carry out a new turn.
They raised prices of foodstuffs by 100 to 150 percent, leading to the strike at the Ursus tractor plant, where the workers cut the rail line between Poznan and Warsaw, and at Radom, where the headquarters of the local committee of the Communist
Meeting of striking workers in Lublin.
Party was burned down.
The strikes spread throughout the country, spurred by both the price hikes, which were cancelled after two days, and by the repression against the people at Radom and Ursus.
Unable to carry out another policy, the bureaucrats could only try to undo what they had previously done. Throughout the
"economic country they introduced an maneuver." They stopped all investments that could still be stopped (in practice this meant all investments that were not considered a priority, even if only a few more weeks of work remained to complete them). They drastically reduced imports in order to use the resources thus freed up to pay the foreign debt (which was an absolute precondition for getting new loans) and to carry out certain investments that were seen as strategic necessities.
In fact, however, local pressures and planning errors caused a continuation of investments in heavy industry to the detriment of investment in transportation, electrical production, grain production, and the food processing industry.
The previous headlong rush for Western licenses! was followed by shortages of spare parts, raw materials, etc. They also halted construction of several power stations, including the immense Kozienice complex that by itself was supposed to provide one quarter of the country's power.
1. To cite just one example, the departments of ship building, railroads, and construction each purchased licenses to manufacture similar electrical motors. Each of these departments produced only a few motors per month under their licenses. If, however, they had gotten together to purchase a single license, they could have produced many more motors, both for the internal market and for export.
At the same time, they completed the construction of one of the largest steelmaking complexes in Europe, Huta Katowice-a big energy consumer-and other investments of the same type, which caused a big shortage of electricity.
In 1976 Poland had been self sufficient in electrical energy and even exported some to neighboring countries. Today, while running its power plants at full capacity, electrical supply is more than one-third below demand. As a result, nearly all the factories are blacked out one day a week or once every two weeks!
Finally, the floods in early and mid-1979 were not caused by "the will of God," as the bureaucracy would have one believe. Instead, due to the "economic maneuver, maintenance of the protective dikes and regulation of river levels was not consi dered a priority.
In a flat country with a temperate climate one pays a heavy price for such a decision. In 1979 about one-third of Poland was "under water." There is nothing to prevent a disaster of the same magnitude this year.
The losses to agricultural production and the costs of repairing flooded factories will undoubtedly total several tens of billions of zlotys.2
The same thing happened with the snow storms, a quite frequent occurrence in Poland, that paralyzed transportation and energy production throughout the country in the first weeks of January 1979. There were insufficient reserves of coal and fuel, not enough snow removal equipment to clear the railroad tracks, not enough chemical products to melt the ice.
2. Polish currency. One hundred zlotys equal US$3.30.
Against the backdrop of this disastrous balance sheet of the past ten years of its rule, and at a time when foreign indebtedness stands at more than $18 billion, the Gierek team again decided to increase meat prices, by 70 to 80 percent. Prudence required that the increases be put into effect on the sly, without any official announcement, and only in certain regions of the country!
This increase was especially resented by the workers because it involved products that had thus far been sold at what are called "normal" prices. In Poland's twotier pricing system, "normal" prices are those that were in effect before 1977, when the bureaucracy established a parallel distribution network for meat and meat products through "commercial" stores charging prices that were 100 to 150 percent higher. In the "normal" distribution network, only the factory canteens were still more or less fully supplied.
The price increases were formally only announced after July 1, when several announced arter duty, when several factories were already on strike.
Biggest Strike Wave Since 1945
On Tuesday, July 1, a strike began at the Ursus mechanical workshops. Ursus is a big complex employing 14,000 workers and producing tractors and agricultural machinery.
The next day 3,500 workers at the POLMO factory in Tezew, some twenty kilometers from Gdansk, stopped production. The same thing happened at WSK Mielec and WSK Swidnik, two factories that make aircraft and communications equipment, each employing more than 10,000 people.
In Gdansk, department K-1 of the shipyards went out, and the workers at EIr MOR, also on strike, sent a delegation to see Gierek.
In Warsaw and its environs, strikes also broke out at the Huta Warszawa steel complex and the black-and-white television picture-tube department of the POL KOLOR Zelow plant near Piaseczno. The tram maintenance workers on Kaweczynska Street held a general assembly, elected a delegation, and announced that they would strike on July 7 if the price increase was not cancelled. In Srem, the Cegielski works foundry stopped work July 2 and 3.
In each case, within two days the workers won wage increases of about 7 to 10 percent, either in the form of bonuses or directly as wages. In addition, the price increases were cancelled between July 4 and 7.
The first wave of strikes was characterized everywhere-with the exception of POLMO in Tezew and Cegielski in Sremby a degree of self-organization of the workers that has not been seen in Poland since the shipyard strike of December
1970-January 1971.
At Ursus, commissions elected by all the workers and led by opposition activists were set up in three departments. In other places they elected strike committees or delegations to negotiate with management.
All the strikes included factory occupations, the traditional method of struggle that has been known since the 1930s as the "Polish strike."
The Second Strike Wave
While forced to retreat, the bureaucracy did not acknowledge defeat. On July 8 the price rises were introduced in nearly all regions of the country. And this brought about the second strike wave, which was more massive, although less organized. Because of the reprisals against the real or presumed leaders of the 1970-71 and 1976 strikes, the workers were very careful on the question of leadership. When asked, "Who represents you?" in more than one case the general assembly responded in unison, "All of us are the representatives!"
On July 9, 10, and 11 the strike hit the brewery in Lezajsk, the Zamech factory in Elblag, and AGROMET in Poznan. In the Warsaw area there were actions at the Swierczewski telecommunications equipment factory, the Wawel electronic watch factory, and the Mera refrigerator plant. At the Swierczewski telecommunications plant the workers got wage increases of 10 percent after they held a general assembly, elected a delegation, and threatened to go out on strike.
Then it was the turn of FSO Zeran, where FIAT-Polski cars are manufactured. This plant employs more than 20,000 workers. On Friday, July 11, management announced raises of 10 percent and sent the workers home, saying, "Vacations begin on the evening of Monday, July 14, so leave early!" With no work to do, the workers returned on Saturday to occupy the factory, demanding that their pay raise, which had been granted as a bonus, be included as a regular wage increase. They won that demand.
Other factories went on strike, following the example of those that had won 10 percent raises. The opposition grouped around the KOR (Social Self-Defense Committee) and its workers' affiliate, the fortnightly bulletin Robotnik (Worker), spread the news of the strikes with all their might, and along with the foreign radio broadcasts in the Polish language, made available reports that appeared in the Western press. This had an effect.
Everywhere, workers know that it is possible to win. Strikes broke out again at some factories that had previously gone out in the first days of July. This happened, for example, at Ursus and WSK Swidnik, where they were to win a 15 percent raise.
At Zyrardow, between Lodz and Warsaw, the majority of the big workplaces went on strike: the Polar-rewena machinetool repair workshop, the Polmos vodka distillery, the Syrena leather and skins factory, and three big textile plants- Zaklady Lniarskie, Zyaradowskie Zaklady Tkanin Technicznych, and Stella. In the Stella plant, a majority of whose workforce is women, including many single mothers, a clandestine strike committee was established. The KOR organized collections to
Baltic Sea
* Major centers of unrest
Gdansk POLAND
SOVIET
Warsaw *
BART
UNION
Lodz*
GERMANY
* * Wroclaw Lublin
CZECHOBLOVAK
make it possible for the strike to take place.
The only strike in which the official union as such played any role is at WSK Swidnik. Fearing that their delegates would suffer repression, the workers demanded and secured the agreement of the union council that it would represent them, alongside the delegates, during negotiations with management.
General Strike in Lublin
Beginning July 9, there were a number of strikes at important factories in Lublin. Among them were the Lublin truck factory, the Buczek shoe factory, the slaughterhouses, a factory that makes scales, and AGROMET. Strike committees were set up in at least two cases—at the prefabricated construction materials factory and in the rail yards.
The rail workers demanded free elections within the union, as well as increases in family allocations to the level received by soldiers and security police, a "special anniversary" bonus, free Saturdays, a raise of 1,200 zlotys a month for all, prohibition of police entering the grounds of "the enterprise," and guaranteed security for the strikers.
The demands of the construction workers were similar: family allocations, an end to the network of "commercial" shops, wage increases of five zlotys an hour for all.
The stopping of trains, followed by the strike of the municipal mass transit, brought the strike to all the factories in the city. For several days there was no bread, as the bakers joined the movement. The authorities viewed the situation as sufficiently serious to warrant bringing in the army to assure transportation and supplies for the city. But aside from the arrest of six opposition activists for forty-eight hours, we are not aware of any other cases of repression.
3. In Poland workers get one Saturday per month off. But this does not apply in the transportation industry.
The bureaucracy retreated, even stating in the press that the "demands of the workers were justified." In a letter from the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, published by the local organ Standar Ludu, the bureaucrats nonetheless warned of "the uneasiness that the work stoppages give rise to among our friends and allies." With the Soviet border barely fifty kilometers from Lublin, everyone understood that they meant to say "the USSR is watching."
The Opposition
On the evening of July 2, the KOR- which has emerged as the main opposition que reporte group-put out a short communiqué reporting on the strikes. When members of the KOR and Robotnik were not present in a factory, they would go to it to verify the information received and to distribute their declaration as well as issue No. 56 of Robotnik, which had come out on July 1, on the eve of the strikes. Ongoing telephone links were established with several Warsaw apartments. The KOR also informed the foreign press about the strikes on a daily basis, providing only information that it had been able to verify.
On July 11 the KOR issued a new declaration, followed the next day by issue No. 57 of Robotnik. That issue included the text of the declaration as well as articles related to the unfolding of strikes that were still going on at that time, and it described the demands put forward and the forms of organization that had emerged. A separate article described in a detailed fashion the experience at Ursus, which the opposition activists consider the most advanced to date.
The KOR committed itself to come to the aid of workers repressed as a result of their strike action. It began to collect a strike fund for certain factories.
At the same time, the KOR published a series of immediate demands, including the demand for the introduction of meat as the only egalitarian way, rationing according to the movement, to distribute the scarce supplies. But in the absence of people's control and given the inequality in incomes and power, rationing runs the risk of having the opposite effect by stimulating the black market.
Speaking to us by telephone, Jacek Kuron, one of the main figures in the KOR, declared: "We think that in this wave of strikes we can gain in experience and, most importantly, can popularize the most advanced experiences. And, since we expect a 'hot autumn,
" we think that this autumn we will reach the point of spreading self-organization throughout society, but in particular self-organization of the workers."**
The distance that the KOR has travelled since it was established in September 1976 is enormous. It began by aiding workers who were subjected to repression and today it is able to organize the most advanced workers, to popularize their struggles, even though it remains a heterogenous movement in which contradictory political outlooks often lead to ambiguous compromises.
The KOR is a pragmatic organization with a confused ideology (but then becoming a Marxist is not an obvious reflex in a country where the workers are waging a massive strike against a government that claims to be "Marxist"). It turns at times toward the church when that institution shows its strength, at times toward the peasantry, as during the milk strikes in 1978, and this time the KOR has oriented toward support of the working class. It was the only one of the various opposition groups that was capable of doing that.
Today, through the vehicle of the fortnightly bulletin Robotnik-which has a press run of 30,000 copies, a figure the KOR hopes to triple between now and the autumn-it embodies the collective memory of the working class. Starting as a sort of intellectuals' "club," it is reaching out toward networks of militant workers. The Bureaucrats' Great Fear
Since the beginning, the bureaucracy's response has been to retreat when faced with the organized working class supported (and kept regularly informed) by the opposition. Factory managers everywhere have agreed to hold discussions with the strikers, and, where the workers have demanded it, they have agreed in writing that there would be no reprisals against strikers.
In the initial days, prices gyrated under the blows of the workers' discontent. Everywhere the workers won raises on the order of 7 to 15 percent. And in those places where the organizations established during the strikes wanted to keep going, the bureaucracy was unable to prevent them.
Aside from arresting some oppositionists and holding them for forty-eight hours, as yet there has been no repression whatsoever!
A circular even warned the Militia: "Do not show yourself in uniform near the factories, especially those that are on strike. Don't send patrol cars around those plants. If you have to intervene to stop looting of stores, do it quickly and quietly. In no case should you do so if there is the threat that a scuffle could break out!"
At the same time, from the very beginning, cracks appeared in the apparatus's monolithism. For example, Stanislaw Kania, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, gave a speech to party cadres in Gdansk in which he implicitly challenged the present leadership and proposed himsell as a candidate for leader ship.
The party no longer is in control of the economy. It does not know the real production figures or real costs—all the statistics are false-and it cannot even guarantee that there will be adequate supplies of bread in coming months! The editor-inchief of Polityka, the Communist Party's official central weekly, after congratulating Gierek for the success of his foreign policy, painted a somberly realistic picture of the economic situation, questioning the methods of the present regime. In another article the Polityka editor made a point of bringing up his function as a parliamentary deputy "elected by the people," although that weekly is not in the habit of covering the debates in the parliament. The "heirs to the throne" are stirring.
Although the bureaucracy has made concession after concession, there is every reason to expect the crisis will continue into the autumn.
Notes
4. The interview was published in the French socialist weekly Rouge, issue No. 928, July 18, 1980.
5. For a discussion of the roots and makeup of the KOR, see "Polish Oppositionists 'Appeal to Society,"* in Intercontinental Press/ Inprecor, March 19, 1979, p. 277.