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From Solidarity to “crumbling bastions”
have fared in
post-Communist Poland
In August 1980, the gates of the Lenin Shipyard in the Baltic port of Gdansk were festooned with flowers, Polish flags and posters heralding the birth of the first independent trade union in the Communist bloc. An 18-day strike led to the formation of the NSZZ Solidarnosc (Independent, self-governing trade union Solidarity) which shook - and ultimately crumbled - the foundations of communism and triggered the end of the Cold War. Yet today, Solidarity and other trade unions have been called “crumbling bastions” in the new capitalist Poland. Reporter Ruth Ellen Gruber, who covered the 1980 Gdansk strikes and has followed the former East Bloc since then reports on this new reality.
WARSAW, Poland - When Polish politicians and international leaders paid tribute at the Gdansk shipyard this August to Solidarity's central role in bringing social and political change, few workers attended. And for Tadeusz Korzinski, a 45 year-old welder who took part in the 1980 strikes and still works at the shipyard, the event left a bitter taste.
"There are no workers at this feast," said Korzinski, "just men in coats and ties. Nothing remains of Solidarity except its name. It has lost its essence, they have betrayed and forgotten us."
Poland's Solidarity revolution has bequeathed a complex, sometimes contradictory, legacy to this country as it makes the transition from communist state to free-market economy. The ouster of the communists, dynamic economic growth, membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the creation of a solid, functioning democracy, are all fruits of the seeds planted in the Polish August.
But, so too is the painful fallout from these wrenching changes, including political fragmentation and economic hardships which paradoxically have targeted Solidarity's very core, and led to sharp erosion of support for trade union activities.
"Solidarity's strongholds were the big State enterprises - the coal mines, the shipyards and so on," said Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a member of the Polish Sejm, or Parliament, who was national spokesman for Solidarity in 1981. "These factories were those hardest hit by the changes of the 1990s."
Even Solidarity's birthplace, the Gdansk shipyard, went bankrupt in 1996, after its Solidarity-led management resisted post-Communist restructuring, Onyszkiewicz said. New private owners eventually took over and began a radical makeover.
"This is a certain irony of history and a tragedy of Solidarity," said Onyszkiewicz. "To introduce historic change, Solidarity had to cut the branch it was sitting on."
Seeing red
Over the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Solidarity became the victim of its own success. From its very start, Solidarity was more than a trade union, and its multifaceted legacy is rooted in its compound identity. Its now famous icon, the flowing red-and-white logo became a world-renowned symbol of the anti-communist crusade and it survived suppression under martial law imposed from 13 December 1981 until 22 July 1983.
But Solidarity fragmented when the common enemy - communism - collapsed in 1989. And although it remained as a trade union, Solidarity activists formed numerous small, bitterly opposing, political parties ranging from the liberal, business-oriented Freedom Union to special interest groups and extreme nationalist splinter formations.
This fragmentation was symbolized in the nation's first free presidential election since the end of World War II and the arrival of the Communist state. The 1990 poll pitted two former Solidarity allies against each other - legendary Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, the populist workers' hero and former Gdansk shipyard electrician who lead Solidarity into existence in 1980 and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the Roman Catholic thinker and editor who had been the leading intellectual advisor to Walesa and his strikers in August 1980.
The bitter fight divided anti-communist forces, and left festering differences. Solidarity faced painful dilemmas thanks to its close association with rightist governments whose shock therapy reforms hurt the union base. The former Communist Party, meanwhile, consolidated into the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD).
Solidarity's dilemmas have become especially painful since 1997, when a government headed by the rightist Solidarity Election Action (AWS) was voted into office. The same man - Marian Krzaklewski - heads both the Solidarity trade union and the AWS. AWS managed to win by pulling a number of bickering, rightist factions under a single, Solidarity-led umbrella. But continuing infighting has contributed to a sharp drop in support. Recent opinion polls give AWS only 15 per cent of public backing.
Today, said journalist and commentator Konstanty Gebert, "The idea of 'solidarity' with a small 's' has disappeared ... it's a different mental universe." Solidarity, he said, was a "national liberation movement masquerading as a trade union movement; the bond uniting people was national. It can't be duplicated because the nation is not in danger - the danger is ourselves. The legacy is that we now live in a national society masquerading as a civil society."
Presidential elections on October 8 illustrated these changes. Incumbent Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist who heads the Democratic Left Alliance, was re-elected with a landslide victory. Solidarity leader Kzzaklewski came in a distant third. One-time hero Lech Walesa, heading his own tiny Christian Democratic party, received a humiliating one per cent of the vote and later announced he was withdrawing from politics.
THE ILO’S ROLE
As pointed out in the recent ILO document, “Your Voice in Work”, developments in Poland demonstrate the role that ILO action and assistance can play in facilitating not only social, but also political change. In fact, it says, “The lesson of much recent history is that the seeds of democratic change were sown in social struggles over how people are treated at work.”
Supported by Solidarity strikes across the nation and bolstered by an unprecedented alliance between workers and intellectuals, strike leaders in Gdansk in August 1980 formulated 21 demands which encompassed broad social and political rights, as well as bread-and-butter issues.
“Our main demand was based on the ILO Charter and its international Convention on labour relations,” Polish Parliament member Janusz Onyszkiewicz, Solidarity’s national spokesman in 1981, recalled in an interview. “We were looking for some legal framework in which we could work. It would have been impossible to have formed a political party. The Communists said all political parties were listed in the Constitution, so there was no room for another.”
“Every association had to be registered by the authorities, who, of course, could refuse to register them,” he said. “the only exceptions were trade unions. There was no legal basis [to refuse registration] because Poland had ratified the Convention that made registration of trade unions automatic.”
The Gdansk Agreement ending the strikes on August 31, 1980, included the Government’s overt acceptance of the principles of Conventions Nos. 87 and 98. In October1980, Poland’s Parliament, the Sejm, adopted a new Trade Unions Act allowing trade union pluralism, but when the new union, Solidarity, could not obtain the registration of its by-laws, the Director-General of the ILO undertook a mission to Poland to help unblock the situation, and in November of that year, Poland’s Labour Minister appeared in person before the Committee on Freedom of Association and announced Solidarity’s registration.
This victory was short-lived, however. Martial law was imposed on December 13, 1981. Trade union activities were barred and existing trade union structures were dissolved. Measures were taken against Solidarity, its leaders and its members.
Nonetheless, the ILO was able to visit Poland, meet with Government and trade union representatives, and visit Solidarity leader Lech Walesa who, like other union leaders, was held in detention.
During the 1980s, the ILO made several recommendations and issued negative reports about the Polish Government’s record vis-à-vis unions. These included recommendations calling for the adoption of legislation compatible with Conventions Nos. 87 and 98, the release of the trade unionists still under detention, and the reinstatement of workers dismissed for trade union activities. These were rejected by the Polish Government. The ILO Committee of Experts continued to monitor the situation closely and in May 1987, the ILO Director-General returned to Poland and met with Government and trade union representatives, including the leadership of Solidarity, which was still not authorized to operate.
A new wave of strikes in 1988 forced the Government to agree to round-table negotiations with Solidarity representatives. These led to a transfer of power to Solidarity-allied forces, through partially free and later free elections. Upon ILO advice, a national tripartite commission was established in January 1989, in part to draft new trade union legislation. To consolidate reforms in the early 1990s, the Polish Government actively supported social dialogue through a project funded by the European Union and executed by the ILO.
Sensitization seminars, practical training in bargaining and dispute resolution, and tripartite study tours (involving both trade union federations) to countries with well-functioning social dialogue and dispute resolution mechanisms, gave the social partners comparative references and helped solidify freedom of association and collective bargaining in Poland.
With growth, solidarity declines
This political ferment has gone on against a background of extraordinary growth. Poland's recovery has been the fastest among the post-Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The evidence is everywhere, from the new glass and steel high-rises onWarsaw's skyline, to sleek boutiques, multiplexes and shopping malls, to traffic-choked city streets and the high-profile presence of multinational chains and companies. Poland hopes to join the European Union by 2005.
But the inequality of the social and economic boom is also easily apparent. Unemployment remains high, with a jobless rate of 14.5 per cent predicted for the end of 2000, and the economy has been described as operating on three tiers: a dynamic private sector, a "leaden-footed" state sector, and an "unreformed and stagnant" agricultural sector.
The influence and effectiveness of trade unions has diminished amid the economic boom - particularly as Poland's private sector, which amounted to only 31 per cent of GDP in 1990, has become the main engine of growth, representing nearly 70 per cent of national output and employment, and dominating the fields of retailing, construction and foreign trade.
"We can observe the erosion of trade unions in the privatized enterprises and a rejection of trade unions in the sector of new private businesses," said a Western diplomat who monitors trade union activity here. "At the same time, the authority of trade unions is declining and fewer employees are members of trade unions. New economic and ownership solutions are generally hostile to trade unions."
These new solutions include foreign investors eager to turn around newly privatized industries.
"Current legislation in support of trade union bargaining power is quite weak, and all power lies with the employers," said the diplomat. Investors, the diplomat said, may go through the "usual processes" of meeting with union representatives but rarely back down from their original positions, and usually win.
An opinion poll conducted by the Public Opinion Studies Center (CBOS) in March 1999, estimated the number of trade union members in Poland at 2.5 million, but trade unions themselves estimate that the number is nearly twice that, or about 4.5 million.
The survey indicated that 40 per cent of employees in the state and public sector and 31 per cent of employees in the social services sector belonged to unions, while only 3 per cent in the private sector did so (the survey did not include agriculture).
In fact, said a study called "Crumbling Bastions?" published by the Instytut Spraw Publicznych, "in those ownership sectors where trade unions are undergoing erosion, union members enjoy lower status than other employees [and] union members undergo relative marginalization in the sectors hostile to trade unions".
Sporadic mass protests - such as last year's rallies, marches, sit-ins and strikes by hospital workers demanding better pay - frequently have had no result. (An exception has been sometimes violent mass protests and road blockades by militant farmers' unions led by the radical populist farm leader Andrej Lepper.)
Solidarity is one of two main trade union associations in Poland. The other is the All-Polish Trade Unions Agreement (OPZZ). Like Solidarity, the OPZZ is also highly politicized. It was founded in the 1980s out of the official Communist unions, and since 1991 it has formed part of the post-Communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). Both unions sit with government and employer representatives on a Tripartite Commission established in 1992 to monitor the economic situation.
But analysts say that the macro-level political involvement of these two main trade union bodies weakens their involvement in the day-to-day problems of workers and union organizations on the local or enterprise level. Some analysts stress that a new approach to unions and their role must evolve to accommodate new political and economic conditions.
"It will be hard for the current generation of union leaders to draw back from their links with the main parties," said the Western diplomat. "However the rank and file in both main unions already believe that the main role of the unions, defending workers' interests, is incompatible with close links with the government of the day ... Polish unions still see militancy as the main route to achieving their objectives, but a younger generation of leaders is beginning to recognize that negotiation usually delivers better results than confrontation."