Polish Workers Demand Return of Solidarity

More than 7,000 strikers at the Lenin Shipyard, where Solidarity was born eight years ago, today demanded the legalization of the outlawed union federation and cheered founder Lech Walesa when he entered the sprawling plant. But Walesa told them to find a new leader.

The government called the strikers’ demand “not negotiable.”

Walesa, 44, spoke to the strikers in the shipyard several times but said he will not lead the strike.

“I am not your leader. I’m tired,” said the man who vaulted the shipyard fence in 1980 and took charge of a labor revolt that brought down a government. “You need a new Walesa, many more new Walesas.

“You declared this strike. I’m with you and I’ll always be with you. I can advise you. I have some experience.”

On Sick Leave

Walesa, who won the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, still works at the shipyard as an electrician but is on sick leave this week, complaining of back pains and low blood sugar.

The strike at the 12,000-worker shipyard began Monday soon after the 9 a.m. breakfast break. The job action grew to between 7,000 and 8,000 people by this morning, said Alojzy Szablewski, chairman of the strike committee.

On the first day of the strike, workers asked only that a local Solidarity chapter be approved, but today they demanded reinstatement of the union nationwide. Solidarity, the first independent union in the Soviet Bloc, was crushed and outlawed after martial law was declared Dec. 13, 1981.

A large poster at the gate listed the other demands: higher pay, release of political prisoners and reinstatement of fired activists.

Polish workers want pay increases of up to 60% to compensate for price increases of 42% caused by the reduction of subsidies by the communist government.

Recognition ‘Not Negotiable’

The biggest strike in more than a week of Poland’s worst labor trouble since the crackdown on Solidarity also involves about 15,000 workers at the Nowa Huta steel complex in the south, the nation’s largest industrial plant.

Government spokesman Jerzy Urban said of the demand for nationwide recognition of Solidarity: “This is not a question that can be an object of negotiations. It is not negotiable.”

He spoke in response to a question at a news conference in Warsaw.

Urban did not say how the government might solve the weeklong crisis and called the strikes internal problems for the plant managers.