Walesa Steps In to Halt Bitter Rail Strike : Poland: He calls the protest ‘anarchy on the road to the construction of a democracy.’ The accord signals that his clout remains strong.

WARSAW — Trains were rolling again in northern Poland on Monday after Solidarity leader Lech Walesa intervened to stop a wildcat strike by disgruntled Polish train workers.

Walesa’s middle-of-the-night intercession halted a weeklong strike that pitted workers against the government’s post-Communist economic reformers, who refused to negotiate wage demands of the workers. The officials argued that a capitulation on salary demands could lead to more strikes.

The workers had threatened a 90-minute nationwide strike for Monday, but after a meeting with Walesa in the northern city of Slupsk that ended at 1:30 a.m., the strike was called off. The transport minister said passenger service will be fully restored by today.

The work stoppage had virtually paralyzed the Baltic ports of Szczecin and Gdansk.

According to the agreement, the management of the state-run railroads will meet with unions to iron out grievances. Walesa said he will meet with the workers’ strike committee June 13.

The Solidarity trade union never endorsed the strike, but the rival trade union federation, OPZZ, entered the strike in support of the wildcatters.

Walesa first met with the strikers on Saturday night in Slupsk, but that meeting was unsuccessful.

“On our road to democracy,” Walesa said, “there are various dangerous curves, and the railway workers’ protest was one of them. We all have to take lessons and draw conclusions from it.”

Walesa said the agreement suspending the strike included “no promises that would be impossible to fulfill later.”

Walesa holds no official government position, and, indeed, has had his differences with the government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, mostly over the impact of the government’s austerity measures on Polish workers.

Strict wage controls coupled with sharply rising prices have reduced real incomes by an estimated 40%, a hardship Walesa sympathized with in his negotiations with the workers. “Your demands are right, but the form that you are doing it in . . . a strike in the present situation, is anarchy on the road to the construction of a democracy.”

The government, wary of Walesa’s past barbs, issued a muted statement. Government spokesman Zbigniew Augustynowicz said the ending of the strike “certainly makes the situation easier. . . . This is a fulfillment of what the government expected. The government has always said it would not talk under the gun of a strike.”

The settlement--temporary though it is--amounts to a victory both for Walesa and Prime Minister Mazowiecki’s government.

From the government point of view, the strike offered evidence, at least for the moment, that there is no widespread public support for strikes, with polls showing a mere 16% of the public behind the railway workers. And the government’s economic planners may have demonstrated their resolve to other potential strike leaders.

For Walesa, the settlement suggests, once again, his power as a mediator and bargainer. Polls have indicated that Walesa’s own popularity with the general public has been falling, possibly as a result of the obvious friction between him and the popular Mazowiecki.

Walesa’s aides have said that he is preparing to run for Poland’s presidency, possibly as early as next year, if President Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former Communist Party leader, steps down.

While the government could take heart at the conclusion of the strike, officials were disappointed with the low turnout of 42% of registered voters in Sunday’s local government elections. They were the first free local elections in Poland since before World War II, and the government had urged public participation as a means of rooting local Communist officials out of office.

Although it is virtually certain that most incumbents were removed, officials had hoped that the turnout would at least equal the 60% recorded for last year’s partially free parliamentary elections.

“The first free elections prove that democracy will not appear automatically together with lifting limitations on creating it,” said a commentary in the Solidarity daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.