Solidarity Strike Protests Polish Food Price Increases

Tens of thousands of Solidarity supporters went on strike for an hour in the Baltic region of Gdansk on Friday in Poland’s biggest protest yet against food price increases imposed by the Communist authorities.

Up to 80,000 Solidarity members and thousands of other Poles stopped work in the region’s shipyards and factories and draped their gates and walls with Solidarity flags in Poland’s red and white national colors, a union spokesman said.

“The strike went even better than we had expected, and even inside the plants where Solidarity is not very strong many workers supported the protest and joined in,” said Bogdan Borusiewicz, Solidarity chairman in the Gdansk region.

Subsidies Lifted

The workers were protesting food price increases of up to 500% that took effect last week when the government lifted subsidies on almost all items.

Solidarity activists said the one-hour strike affected about 480 factories but not the V.I. Lenin Shipyard, where Walesa led a 17-day occupation strike in August, 1980, that gave birth to the independent trade union.

Workers there voted not to strike because a Polish-American millionaire, Barbara Piasecka-Johnson, was in Gdansk studying how to rescue the plant from bankruptcy. She wants to form a new joint company and invest millions of dollars in the yard.

Government Crisis

Friday’s strike coincided with a political crisis over the inability of Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, a Communist who was appointed premier Aug. 2, to coax Solidarity lawmakers into a “grand coalition” government.

Walesa, who attended a strike rally at the Komuna Paryska shipyard in the port of Gdynia, said he will continue to resist Kiszczak’s efforts to prevent the opposition from forming its own government.

“I opposed Kiszczak before, and I will do it now that he is premier,” Walesa said. “No government could stay in office more than 10 months, and I doubt that Kiszczak will succeed in forming a new government.”