14th August 1980: Lech Walesa leads a strike in a Polish shipyard that leads to the Solidarity union скачать в хорошем качестве

14th August 1980: Lech Walesa leads a strike in a Polish shipyard that leads to the Solidarity union

A decade of economic and political crises preceded the 1980 strike in Gdańsk, which quickly spread throughout Poland and galvanised various other strike committees to join together for a common goal. The trigger for industrial action was the firing of a popular worker at the shipyard, a female crane operator and activist called Anna Walentynowicz. Just five months before her planned retirement, she was sacked for being a member of an illegal trade union. This move proved highly unpopular with the shipyard workforce, who demanded that she be reinstated. Just a week after the strike began, a governmental commission began negotiations with the strikers and, on 30 August, they and representatives of the Gdańsk workers signed an agreement in which many of the strikers’ demands were met. The fact that political change, including the resignation of the Polish Communist Party’s General Secretary, had come about thanks to the workers’ action emboldened the people of Poland and fuelled the formation of the national labour union Solidarity. Within two years up to 80% of the entire Polish workforce had joined Solidarity or one of its sub-organisations, and they regularly used strikes to achieve political change. In March 1981, the crippling effects of 12 million people going on a four-hour warning strike demonstrated that the Communist Party was no longer the most powerful force in the country.