Flooding Workers literally flooding into the new unions wherever SLuCLuICS Where they don't, moves are underway to create them.
We visited the free. union headquarters in Gdansk a week atter the signing of the agreement. They have taken over an old hotel in the area of Wrzeszcz, just a short drive from the Lenin shipyard:
As soon as we explained that the purpose of our visit wen to lake te a backe British labour movement we were given a tremendous reception. Solidarity from workers in the West, they explained, was absolutely crucial to their future success. JANLYTINSKI, an activist in the Social Self-Defence Committee (KOR) and its paper Robotnik, acted as an advisor to the strike committee exist.
Wroclaw. He was interviewed about the significance of trade the strike wave and the role played by the KOR.
What is your assessment of the strike?
There were several phases to the strike, starting Then the demands were purely and it is connic, teresting to observe tne change to polițical demands In every strike economic demands masked You can observe iwo types : 675 Comanda Uses and secondly, for.
better distribution of food. The workers were saying: You give us these things and there will be peace, but since you can't meet these demands there will have Walbrzeg to be political changes.
in Therefore their became overtly they began to call for free trade unions came out of the election of workers' delegations to meet the management and the election of strike which signified a great change in July. in both a political and organisational sense. very in- The first great change came in Lublin. They voiced explicit for æn vc æv vv d political Lublin. It was the first time that the strike committees refused hirstiy foeo dissolve.
the workers.
try. demands The strike political and started in This idea of free trade and very Listed. _cunniliccs. that they ment.
the strikers develop?
• strikers to demands. In eted fo contibte orgatising more mature right from tthe start Then the Gdansk workers went on strike with demands which soon gained widespread support throughout the coun- nik's 20,000. in Gdansk defence of Anna Walentynowicz. This was a new important develop- members ment: it showed that a new Calil. workers movement already exThe workers were saying our release. wanted a complete separation from the manageHow did the relationship between KOR/Robotnik and the KOR and Robotnik helped the strategy articulate their Gdansk the workers" demands were much, because Robotnik was much more available than for example in Silesia.
Before the strike Robotcirculation was about During strike went up to about 50,000 and it still wasn't enough.
arrests of KOR were quite signifiWe were freed because the Gdansk workers demanded been arrested because the autorities feared we might become too strong. For the first time they realised that we had a crucial impact on the course of the strike.
With our release the whole bureaucracy Focus came crashing down. They hạd hoped to clinch a deal with the workers, and would then have ri roger claimed that they could reach agreement with the workers without SHlcuC CIC houdielllakels Just holding us for one day after a signed agreement would have been a significant propaganda victory. But though autorites and 'experts' giving advice to the Gdansk strikers urged them not to press KOR members, the workers knew what it meant to be arrested.
They understood our role in the strike and so they pushed forward the demand.
*This is part of a longer intervien carried out by Labour •on Eastern Europe which will be published in full in the nev issue of the journal.