Word: five-day
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...most ominous dispute, Solidarity's national commission passed a defiant resolution calling for a five-day week by declaring Saturday a nonworking day. Since most Poles are usually required to work a six-day week, this was a provocative departure. Several union locals, representing shipyard workers in Gdansk and Gdynia, coal miners in Silesia, and most of the 16,000 workers at the giant Ursus tractor factory outside Warsaw, threatened to force the demand by not showing up for work on Saturday. The Ministry of Labor, Wages and Social Affairs responded by instructing factory managers to dock...
...cited the country's deepening economic crisis and announced that for the time being it could not give all workers all Saturdays off. Instead, the government said that it hoped to increase gradually the present number of free Saturdays (there were 14 in 1980) until 1985, when the five-day week would become generalized. As a start, the government would nearly double the number of free Saturdays this year. But that was not enough for union militants intent on holding the government to the letter of its summer agreements...
Walesa made one of his periodic trips to Warsaw to meet with Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski to discuss not only the issue of the five-day week but also censorship disputes, including the right of Solidarity to publish its own newspaper and of theaters to screen a documentary about the summer strikes. The fact that Jagielski, the regime's top-ranking Deputy Premier, who had personally negotiated the Gdansk accord, had been suddenly called in to replace a lower-ranking official for the talks showed the serious ness of the new labor-government face-off. Walesa and Jagielski were...
...day meeting, his account of the Warsaw talks was cautiously pessimistic. "They are trying to dismantle us quietly," he said. "We must realize that Solidarity is a thorn in the government's side." The Solidarity delegates, in accordance with the summer agreements, proclaimed their call for a five-day work week and warned against any attempt to compensate by wage reductions or loss of other holidays. The resolution did leave the government an out, however, by declaring that the union leadership would listen to "properly explained" government counterproposals for some limitation on the number of free Saturdays...
...national television appearance, Jagielski offered a compromise: the government would grant workers every other Saturday off, or give them all Saturdays free but add half an hour to each working day, in effect, a five-day week of 8½-hour work days. Otherwise, Jagielski pleaded, the loss of Saturday work would cause another 9% drop in production, on top of 1980's economic woes. Thus, he said, he was appealing to "the patriotism of the people" to help out in this difficult time. Despite his entreaties, a large percentage of Poland's industrial work force did stay...