SHE is small, about fifty, softspoken. Anna Walentynowicz has always worked in the Lenin shipyard. She was a welder for 17 years, and is now a cranedriver:
Last year she was sacked on a trifling pretext. But her standing was high with the workers; she had already played an important role in the 1970 strike. Her re-integration, along with that of Lech Walesa, was one of the strikers' first demands.
In fact, they re-integrated her themselves on 14 August, and immediatelv elected her to the strike committee (MKS). Then she became a member of its presidium.
Just minutes after the announcement of the agreement, it was difficult to get to talk to her. She was completely surrounded, signing strike posters as vers.
Demands victory achieved, it was time for trophies. Throughout the factory there was a rusn lo gel leaflets, posters, and pictures signed by Walesa and other members of the MKS, by foreign jourAfter several attempts managed to ask Anna Walenfew questions.
What does she think agreement?
'We're happy, very happy. We've obtained a great deal, all our demands have substantially met.
religious symbols were carried of the strikers. most people are scandalised at any suggestion that the church should play a directly political role.
Baltic Sea Around us about strikers are gathered, listening. It starts to rain, and someone been brings out an shelter us.
But
'Tomorrow'
Ana Walentynowicz, ing to found the new union. Above the provisional headquarters put up a big sign: "Free and self-managed trade union".
Essential
'We will thirty telephone. The which isn't clear yet is the printing arrangements umbrella to explains An'we are gogoing organ:
Unțil now even have Robotnik only thing for ed on a shoestring' OUE It will be essential for the says, new union to have its own 'Our work depends on it. It will give information, open its columns to discussion, provide a means of convincing people we've only had Wytrzeze (Coastal Worker) which was semi-legal; often confiscated, and producRobotnik will carry on, she but the union paper is much more ambitious:
'We want a daily, on sale in the kiosks. We'll keep the name of our strike bulletin: Solidarnosc (Solidarity). It should be printed officially, with the costs paid out of union dues. And if they won't print it for us, we'll buy our own machines.