Talks Ease Tensions at Polish Shipyard : ‘Safety Guarantees’ Are Offered to Striking Workers in Gdansk

Shipyard workers, on strike here for six days, met with the management Saturday and the strike committee declared after the session that the discussions “moved definitely toward an agreement which would allow the end of the strike.”

The talks between members of the strike committee and its advisory team and representatives of the Lenin Shipyard management, came after a meeting between Tadeusz Goclowski, the Roman Catholic bishop of Gdansk, and the government’s local security chief, who said he had received “safety guarantees” for the strikers.

The shipyard has been surrounded since Wednesday by riot police. The government on Thursday used police to evict striking workers from the Lenin Steelworks in Nowa Huta, bringing expressions of outrage from Polish opposition forces, who have predicted that the same tactics would be used against the strikers here.

About 800 workers remained in the shipyard Saturday, their spirits considerably higher than in recent days, when an assault by riot police was expected.

The meeting between the bishop and the area security chief for Gdansk, Gen. Jerzy Andrzejewski, on Friday night seemed to have brought about the first relaxation in tensions here since the strike began Monday.

‘Full of Hope’

“I am obviously full of hope it can end peacefully,” the bishop said. “I sincerely think it is possible to end it without using force.”

As a result of that meeting, a delegation of strikers and advisers from the shipyard met with the bishop Saturday morning. The details of the meeting were closely held, but some of the more militant members of the group wore glum expressions at the end of it, suggesting that an effort at compromise was under way. The meeting with the shipyard management was set soon after, to discuss worker demands.

According to a committee leader, Alojzy Szablewski, a veteran of the 1980 strikes here that led to the birth of the Solidarity trade union, the issues discussed at the meeting were wages and guarantees of safety for the strikers.

The question of the legal establishment of Solidarity, banned by the Polish government since 1981, has been the leading demand of the strikers. The directors of the shipyard say they cannot address the issue, however, since it is a political question that can be resolved only by the government in Warsaw--which has said it has no intention of sanctioning the official rebirth of Solidarity in any form.

Szablewski said the delegation of strikers merely asked the management team to forward the Solidarity demand to higher authorities.

It was not certain whether the holdouts inside the shipyard would agree to end the strike without securing Solidarity recognition as a union.

Veteran members of Solidarity were generally against surrendering on the demand, although it was less clear whether the younger strike leaders were as firmly committed on the question.

Another meeting was scheduled to include the public prosecutor from Gdansk, apparently to discuss worker concerns about prosecution of strike leaders or participants once the strike has ended.

Solidarity national leader Lech Walesa, who has remained inside the shipyard since police surrounded it Tuesday night, is not taking a direct part in the talks, although he is in constant consultation with the strikers. He has pointed out repeatedly that he is not leading the strike and will follow the lead of the strike committee.

It was generally known, however, that Walesa opposes giving in on the Solidarity demand. If the Walesa view prevails, it could mean that the strike could go on for days, or that the authorities could choose to remove the remaining strikers by force.

Although the number of strikers has declined to about 800, and may have diminished by 60 or 70 in the last 24 hours, according to one Solidarity adviser, it seems likely that a hard core of 400 to 500 are determined to remain to the end.

Walesa referred to the standoff with authorities as “a game of chess” in which “we are playing chess and they (the authorities) are playing dominoes. We want to get to the point where we are all playing the same game.”

Walesa said he was holding out, along with the strikers, “because I want, with the least expense, to force the government to think things over. . . . I want thinking on the part of the government.”

He said that if the strikers in Gdansk lose, it would only delay additional strikes or protests by the Polish opposition by “three months, or a year,” but that they would inevitably return.

Meanwhile, the Polish government, about to enact a law that would ban all strikes and protests until the end of the year, sentenced 17 of the strikers at Nowa Huta to jail terms ranging between two weeks and one month. At least six of the strike’s leaders have been summoned before the Krakow public prosecutor, apparently to answer more serious charges.

Janusz Onyskiewicz, Solidarity’s national spokesman, arrested recently in Warsaw, was sentenced to six weeks in jail on charges of passing false information.

Bogdan Lis, Solidarity head in Gdansk, was sentenced to three months in jail for “incitement.”