Gdansk Strike Brings Arrest of Solidarity Chiefs

Police rounded up Solidarity leaders across Poland today after thousands of workers went on strike at the Lenin shipyard where the free trade union was born in 1980.

Opposition sources said at least seven members of Solidarity’s 13-member National Executive Commission were held in different cities as the strike brought a major escalation in Poland’s worst labor unrest in several years.

The five other members of the commission headed by Solidarity Chairman Lech Walesa went underground to evade detention, the sources said. Walesa remained at liberty in Gdansk.

Up to 3,000 workers took over the yard at noon and began a sit-in strike amid exuberant scenes reminiscent of historic strikes in August, 1980, that convulsed Poland, overthrew Communist leader Edward Gierek and brought the birth of Solidarity.

12,000 Employees

The yard employs 12,000 workers. Hundreds of supporters milled around the locked main gate, draping it with huge banners, red-and-white Polish flags, flowers and pictures of Polish-born Pope John Paul II and the Black Madonna of Czestochowa.

“Occupation Strike,” declared a makeshift banner made of two tablecloths from which a black-and-white photo of the Pope dangled.

Police briefly sealed off the gate, pushing away Solidarity supporters, but later withdrew. Walesa and Roman Catholic Father Henryk Jankowski, his close adviser, went in to talk with the strikers.

Walesa told the men he was with them but he did not join the sit-in. He said he was needed to coordinate union activities across the country.

Union Leaders Detained

In Warsaw, opposition sources said Solidarity’s regional leaders in Warsaw, Gdansk, Lodz, Torun, Bydgoszcz, Poznan and Bielsko Biala were detained in sudden police swoops. All are members of the national commission.

Workers at an electronics factory employing 3,700 people in the southwestern city of Wroclaw, another Solidarity stronghold, also downed tools for several hours but resumed work when the management promised to grant their pay demands.

The strikes came after a May Day call for nationwide action to back 16,000 steelworkers on strike for a week in the southern city of Krakow.

In Krakow, opposition sources said the striking steelworkers, who seek a 50% pay raise, were “overjoyed” at the news from Gdansk.