Poland and Solidarity Agree on Key Reforms

Solidarity and Polish government negotiators agreed today that the banned union could re-emerge as a national movement if it agreed to back government economic and political reforms.

A communique issued after government-opposition talks on union pluralism said both sides agreed that provisions of a 1982 law that restrict unions to representing individual branches of industry should be dropped.

The law should be amended “to make it possible for trade unions freely to create their own organizational structures,” the communique said.

Solidarity’s demand for legalization with the national structures it had during its period of legality in 1980-81 has been a key issue since talks opened last week.

The union owed its strength then to a national organization grouping workers from every branch of industry and commerce.

However, government officials expressed doubts before the talks about letting Solidarity re-emerge as a mass movement capable of again challenging the Communist Party’s monopoly of power.

“It’s exactly what we wanted to get,” Solidarity spokesman Janusz Onyszkiewicz said of the communique. “The opening of possibilities for Solidarity to exist in the shape it wants has in fact been agreed.”

However, the communique said its legalization depended on the success of the “round table” talks in forging a national agreement to back economic and political reforms and calming mounting labor unrest.

The decision followed a similar agreement Wednesday that farmers’ trade unions suppressed in 1981, including Rural Solidarity, would also be allowed to reemerge.

The communique announced other concessions to Solidarity’s demands on the manner and form of its re-emergence.

It said the 1982 union law should be changed to allow registration of national unions by a single legal act. Solidarity had said conflicts could arise if each union cell had to seek registration.