Word: gdansk
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...familiar baggy gray suit, Lech Walesa proudly led his delegation into Room 203 of the Warsaw district provincial court. As hundreds of sympathizers jostled one another outside, the Baltic labor leader slid an eight-page document across the long table. It was the charter of Solidarnosc (Solidarity), the new Gdansk-based umbrella organization representing 36 independent unions from all over Poland. Judge Zdzislaw Koscielniok declared he would examine the charter for two weeks and then rule on its legitimacy. As Walesa departed from the drab sandstone building, cheering workers hoisted him on their shoulders and carried him through the streets...
...court appearance was the high point of a triumphant tour of Warsaw by the Gdansk electrician who became a national folk hero as the leader of the legendary Lenin Shipyard strike. Walesa began the morning with a 9 o'clock Mass at the Church of the Holy Cross, where three days earlier, regular radio broadcasts of the Roman Catholic Mass had resumed following a 41-year blackout. Later in the day, Walesa's delegation met with a group of Politburo members, including Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski, the official who had negotiated the Gdansk agreement on behalf...
...question of national unity, in fact, dominated the Gdansk meeting and sparked an intense four-hour debate. Delegates from smaller factories and towns called for a strong central organization to protect them from harassment by local officials. Those from larger cities and more populated regions like the Baltic coast, where the new unions are already strong, favored a loose advisory body. A closed-door session finally produced a compromise: a national " coordinating committee" whose member unions will retain their own decision-making powers but will adopt uniform statutes and register as a group with the Warsaw district court...
...prospects for economic and political reforms. Conscious of their new-found power, the workers felt they probably could meet any attempt by the government to renege on the basic concessions with renewed strikes. The implicit threat was not lost on the authorities. Said Tadeusz Fiszbach, party boss in the Gdansk area: "Only cooperation with the new unions will make our survival possible in a difficult situation...
...concessions made to Labor Leader Lech Walesa and his colleagues in Gdansk will, in the short run, worsen the economic picture. Not only will national income decline as a result of the strikes, but the promised wage increases will cost the government an inflationary $3 billion...