Poland: We Will Not Go Back

As talks falter, workers and farmers launch a new round of protests

In the Baltic seaport of Gdansk, sirens wailed to signal the start of a four-hour "warning strike" that interrupted public transport and shut down more than 800 plants. In Warsaw, red-and-white Polish flags fluttered defiantly over idle buses and streetcars as drivers joined workers from some 60 local factories and offices in a related half-day stoppage. On the outskirts of Bydgoszcz, 140 miles northwest of the capital, police turned back columns of angry tractor drivers who were seeking to stage a demonstration in the middle of the town. The snowballing protest climaxed on Saturday, when millions of workers observed a nationwide job boycott ordered by Solidarity, the independent union federation. Across Poland last week, workers once again served notice that they would bitterly resist any attempt to roll back the rights they had won through a summer of crippling strikes.

The latest recurrence of labor turmoil centered on two volatile issues: the workers' insistence on a five-day work week and the farmers' demand for recognition of their own independent union, Rural Solidarity. But the protests also raised a broader complaint: the government, the unions claimed, has failed to carry out a number of promises contained in the historic agreements signed last summer not only in Gdansk, but also in Szczecin and Jastrzebie. Among them were pledges to increase Solidarity's access to the press, free political prisoners and reduce censorship. As Union Leader Lech Walesa put it to a throng of followers last week: "Let's not fight for local goals. Let's fight for wider goals. We will not go back one step."

It was increasingly obvious that the government had no intention of retreating either. Party Boss Stanislaw Kania had already begun to harden his policy toward the fledgling labor movement. Two weeks ago, Kania publicly denounced some of Rural Solidarity's advisers as "counter-revolutionaries," thereby casting serious doubt on any chance for the farm union's legalization. Riot police were sent to break up sit-ins in Nowy Sacz and Ustrzyki Dolne. Though authorities stopped short of ousting the 400 workers and farmers occupying the old official union offices in Rzeszow, they refused to enter into any negotiations with the protesters that might resolve the tense local standoff (see box).

There were also ominous new signs of an impending crackdown. At week's end the government expelled a number of Western journalists, including the representatives of TIME and the three major U.S. television networks. The object of such expulsions, said one Bonn analyst, appeared to be simply "to close the windows as much as possible."