75,000 Poles Strike Mines; Government Ready to Act

Government mining officials said here Saturday that 11 Silesian coal mines are now on strike, idling at least 75,000 coal miners and shutting down as much as 15% of Poland’s coal mining industry.

The miners are demanding legalization of the outlawed Solidarity trade union and increased wages and benefits.

As four new strikes were confirmed by authorities here, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, met with members of the national Defense Committee and said “appropriate measures were taken” to deal with the intensifying labor unrest.

The committee did not specify what they are, but striking miners here were on the alert inside the closed mines--where all production had stopped--as police convoys moved through the area in large numbers.

Nine mines are now shut down in the Jastrzebie mining area, as well as two other large mines--the Andaluzja and the Dimitrow--in an adjacent district.

In addition, about 2,000 striking dockworkers have shut down the nation’s second-largest port at Szczecin on the Baltic coast. Bus and trolley drivers, striking in the same city, have paralyzed public transport.

“We will not go back to work without Solidarity,” said a miner at the July Manifesto facility here on Saturday, one of perhaps 1,000 workers who have remained inside the mine gates since Tuesday. “Solidarity is our only answer.”

Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, a principal founder of the union eight years ago at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, said Friday that he would lead the shipyard workers out on strike beginning Monday unless authorities agree to recognize the union, which was outlawed in 1982. A 10-day strike by the shipyard’s union activists ended in May with no recognition from the government, which has steadfastly refused to reinstate the union.

A wave of strikes in the spring, ranging from a steel mill near Krakow to the Baltic shipyards, failed to generate widespread national support and thus ended in at least temporary victory for the economically beleaguered Polish government.

The spread of strikes through Poland’s vital coal mining industry, which accounts for nearly 20% of the nation’s hard-currency exports to the West, adds new pressure on the Jaruzelski government, which has been unable to reverse a downward economic slide after six years in power.

More Threats Voiced

Additional threats were voiced Saturday by Solidarity, whose activists said “strike alerts” have been mounted among workers at the huge Ursus tractor factory in Warsaw and at the Nowa Huta steel mill near Krakow, whose workers played a leading role in the labor strife of April and May. The strike at Nowa Huta was ended by force when authorities invaded the steel mill with riot police.

Although it is not certain what course the strikers or the government would take, an outbreak of strikes taking in a wide cross-section of Polish industry would be difficult for the Jaruzelski government to sustain, and the possibility of a change in leadership could not be ruled out. Jaruzelski, installed as Communist Partly leader in 1981, has been unable to gather public support for his economic reforms or his plans for political reconciliation.

Antony Pilny, spokesman for the state-run mine management, said Saturday that the 15 mines of the Jastrzebie-Rybnik district produce 20% of Poland’s coal and that losses, since the strikes began, represent $5.5 million to the nation’s coal industry.

“We are worried about further losses,” he said. “The mines are not being maintained. We are worried about heat in the deepest shafts of the mines. Depending on how long the mines are out of production, it could cost millions to get started again.”

Pilny that the idled mines in the Jastrzebie-Rybnik area alone involve 65,000 workers. The two other struck mines employ at least 10,000 workers.

Promised Pay Boosts

The miners, sitting around the grounds of the July Manifesto mine in grimy olive drab coveralls, explained that they did not join the outbreak of strikes back in April and May--when their participation could have been significant--because they were promised special pay increases.

The wage increases were to have taken effect in pay envelopes received Aug. 15. But instead of the increases that were supposed to result from a complicated revision of pay plans, they said, most of them received less money. The result, they said, is that they no longer believe government promises.

“They gave us promises and promises,” said one miner, “and nothing happened. And then people understood that they were being cheated. And all the time prices were going up.”

The mother of one miner voiced what seemed to be the general impression of miner families. She stood outside a chain-link fence, where she had come to visit her 18-year-old son, inside with the strikers.

“I don’t know what will happen, but I am with them,” she said. “Day by day, food prices are going up. With every day there are new prices. There is every day new packaging, and new prices, and even the clerks cannot keep up. The meat stores are mostly empty, and when they are not, you cannot afford the prices.”

The miners also complained that their position of privilege in Polish industry has eroded. Once, they noted, special access to imported goods and specialty shops--the kinds of luxuries unavailable to ordinary Polish industrial workers--was one of the attractions that lured the young into the mines.

Now, they say, those luxuries, won by working on special holidays and weekends, are unavailable, because overtime money has to be spent on earning enough for basic needs.