4,000 Pro-Solidarity Miners Stage Sit-In Strike

Polish riot police sealed off a coal mine where more than 4,000 workers staged a sit-in strike Tuesday to demand the revival of the outlawed Solidarity union and raises of about 50%, dissidents reported.

The strike at the Manifest Lipcowy coal mine near the southwestern Polish city of Jastrzebie began Monday night with about 300 miners refusing to work, and it swelled Tuesday as many of the miners arriving for the next shift joined the protest.

Management then blocked off the mine, one of Poland’s largest with about 9,000 employees, and refused to let miners reporting for later shifts enter the area.

Riot police blocked roads about 2 1/2 miles from the mine and refused to allow people or vehicles to pass, a Solidarity activist said.

Another source said telephone connections were cut between Manifest Lipcowy and four other mines in the area where protests were under way and between the city of Jastrzebie and the mines.

Families of the miners were briefly allowed to bring food and drinks to the strikers, but the deliveries were cut off Tuesday night as 15 more vans of riot police arrived at the mine, a dissident source said.

The revival of the independent Solidarity union in the mines is the chief request on a list of 20 demands issued by the workers.

The miners are also demanding a 50% wage increase, the reinstatement of an unspecified number of miners fired for political activity, a 30% reduction in the number of white-collar workers--with the money saved going for higher wages--and an announcement of the strike in the official media.

The Communist Party newspaper Trybuna Ludu said that only new unions dominated by the party can operate in the mines, saying the revival of independent unions would bring “an all-out war between respective trade unions.”

The news agency PAP described the protest as “the illegal political strike” and said the local prosecutor called on the strikers to disperse but they refused.

The prosecutor said the strikers faced “legal consequences” -- an apparent threat that they would be fired.