7,000 Polish Strikers Win Raises, Unionists Say

About 7,000 workers at a heavy machinery plant in southern Poland halted their strike in its second day Saturday as the factory management gave in to demands for higher pay, union activists said.

But a strike at the sprawling steel mill at Nowa Huta near Krakow, 175 miles southwest of Warsaw, continued for a fifth day, with the government apparently refusing to meet workers’ demands. “No talks with the strike committee will take place,” government spokesman Jerzy Urban said.

Underscoring his comment were reports that squads of riot police were dispatched to the Lenin foundry at Nowa Huta.

Police Deployed

“Long riot police columns move into the area,” an eyewitness was quoted by United Press International as saying. “I counted 182 police vehicles. They took (up) positions around the foundry in various places.” Several union groups, including the underground leadership of the banned Solidarity trade union movement at the huge Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk on the Baltic coast, have promised immediate strike action if force is employed against the Nowa Huta workers.

The settlement of the strike at the Stalowa Wola factory, 85 miles northeast of Krakow, which manufactures military equipment, eased the labor unrest that had been building in Poland for the last week.

Workers at both plants--32,000 at Nowa Huta, 18,000 at Stalowa Wola--were demanding pay increases of about 50% to offset price hikes imposed by the Polish government in February and March as a key feature of an economic austerity plan.

The terms of the settlement at Stalowa Wola were said to have included a $50-per-month pay increase and the reinstatement of a monthly coal allowance for workers. In addition, two Solidarity activists, blamed by authorities for helping to organize the strike, were to be reinstated, along with 800 workers in the plant’s tool department who were among the first to walk off their jobs Friday.

“Management gave in to all the demands,” said Grzegorz Surdy, a Solidarity activist in Krakow.

The situation in Nowa Huta, meanwhile, appeared to remain at a stalemate. The management of the steel works has been negotiating with the officially sanctioned union there, apparently in an effort to divide and isolate a faction of workers who have been following the lead of an unofficial strike committee, whose membership has close ties to Solidarity.

The negotiations stalled, worker spokesmen said, over the official union’s demands, which included not only a 50% increase in their base pay but a 50% increase in other allowances as well.

As Poland prepared for its traditional May Day holiday today, reports circulated that workers in other plants were contemplating strike action. Among them were said to be another steel mill and a coal mine in the Katowice area of south-central Poland.

Two leading Solidarity activists, Janusz Onyskiewicz and Zbigniew Bujak, who were arrested Thursday, were released from detention Saturday. One other Solidarity leader, Jacek Kuron, remained in custody. Solidarity spokesmen say that about 25 of the union’s activists have been detained in the last three or four days.

With many industrial enterprises shut down for the weekend, it may be at least two days before it becomes clear whether the wave of strikes will continue into a second week.

It seemed likely, however, that other industrial workers will press for wage hikes to match those won by the workers at Stalowa Wola.

Although the wave of labor unrest, which began Monday with a brief transport workers strike in the western Polish city of Bydgoscsz, is the most intense since the upheavals of 1980 and 1981, which ended with the imposition of martial law and the banning of Solidarity, most observers note that the mood in the country today is much different.

Polish workers seem more concerned now with basic money issues than with the idealistic and political matters that characterized the mood of 1980, when the birth of Solidarity gave rise to the hope that the ideals of a “free trade union” could lead to a radical restructuring of Polish society.

Most workers say the recent round of price increases, officially averaging 42%, have left them struggling to buy basic necessities. Although the government granted a round of wage increases which it said would compensate for the price hikes, the workers argue that their standard of living has dropped sharply.