The Washington Post, July 7, 1989, Friday, Final Edition
EDITORIAL; PAGE A17
How to Help Poland
by George Soros
When the heads of state meet in Paris later this month, they will have
Poland on the agenda. It will be one item out of many, and there is a
danger that they will miss an opportunity that comes along only once in
a great while.
(clip)
The dire economic situation has a positive aspect; it would not need a
great deal of resources to turn it around. At the current free market
rate of exchange, the budget deficit, which is the engine of inflation,
is in the region of $ 1 billion. Existing economic structures have
become so dysfunctional that there would be little resistance to a
complete restructuring of the economy. Moreover, both the government and
Solidarity are not only receptive but positively eager for radical
change. A trade union agitating for a return to capitalism sounds
unbelievable to Western ears; yet that is the case in Poland today. A
moment's reflection will show that a solvent employer is in the best
interests of the employee -- especially in Poland, where the state is
both morally and financially bankrupt.
===
From 2/3/2003 "Transitions Online - Intelligent Eastern Europe", a
magazine funded by Soros's Open Society Institute. I am including the
whole thing because it of some considerable interest and only available
to subscribers.
Letting go of a lifetime job is hard, and Poland�s industrial workers
are not ones to give up a battle quickly. Just ask the picketers in
possibly Europe�s longest-running industrial dispute.
by Wojciech Kosc
OZAROW MAZOWIECKI, Poland--Ozarow Mazowiecki seems an unlikely site for
what is probably the longest-running picket in Europe. Favorably located
just 15 minutes by car from Warsaw on the busy Warsaw-Poznan highway, it
should perhaps be home to many prosperous businesses. Instead, Ozarow
has become the latest symbol of the predicament of Poland�s old
industrial workers as they are forced to adapt or die in a market economy.
It all began back in April 2002 when the town�s biggest employer,
Tele-fonika, slashed 900 jobs at the local cable factory. Its old
employees didn�t just pass through the gate and return home, however.
Instead, they set up three huge military tents outside the gates to
their former workplace and a picket line. Seven months later, they are
still there.
This is a particularly harsh winter, and conversation does not come
easily: Three men clad in greatcoats have popped out of the tents for a
cigarette, not conversation. When they do talk, it is about the picket
and what they have lost. One says it is more and more difficult to
provide his kid with the things he needs for school. Another one is
interested in photography, but says he now hasn�t got enough money to
pursue this hobby. The car of the third man stays parked in its garage
more and more frequently.
The atmosphere is a little less gloomy inside, and conversations do not
revolve exclusively around the picket. People drink tea and coffee, and
grill sausages on an improvised stove.
�My family is suffering because I�m here all the time. I haven�t cooked
dinner for them for several days now,� says Miroslawa Pisarska.
285 DAYS AND COUNTING
Every building near the entrance to the factory is covered with banners:
�900 workers of the Cable Factory fight for their jobs� and �The SLD
[the Democratic Left Alliance, Poland�s co-ruling party] and the police
defend thieves� run some of the slogans. Another keeps count of the days
since the demonstration began. By now it must read: �Mr. Miller and Mr.
Cupial--we have been here for 285 days now.�
Leszek Miller is the Polish prime minister, and Boguslaw Cupial is the
CEO of Tele-fonika, the company responsible for closing down the
factory. It is Poland�s biggest cable producer, with a 60 percent share
of the Polish market, and produces 8 percent of the cables sold in
Europe. Half of its output is exported to Germany and the United
Kingdom. It may have a commanding share of the market, says spokesperson
Jerzy Jurczynski, but this has not been a good market to be in lately.
The company ended 2002 with a loss of $2 million. To save money, he
said, it had to lay off workers.
It also began to wind down the factory. That decision is what prompts
the reference to the police. On the protest�s most dramatic day, 27
November, Tele-fonika decided to withdraw all the equipment it could
from the factory for use at its other production sites, in Bydgoszcz and
Szczecin. The picketers tried to stop the trucks but were held back by
the police and Tele-fonika�s paid security men.
�Twelve hundred policemen arrived at the factory at 3 a.m.,� recalled
Slawomir Gzik, the leader of the picketers� organization, which they
have dubbed the Polish Protest Committee. The committee�s abbreviation,
OKP, seems to be a deliberate reference to the committees Solidarity
formed in 1989, just prior to the first semi-democratic elections.
�The security men arrived half an hour later and immediately started to
drive us out. It was a battle with fists and batons. They dragged women
by their hair. The police told us they were going to defend us. They did
nothing, though. I still have bruises on my legs,� Gzik said, pulling up
his trousers.
�I too got beaten by security,� said Teodozja Szkaradowska. She reveals
swollen, blue legs and a document from the hospital. �I got a few kicks
from the police as well,� she added.
�Before, we would give the policemen tea and coffee. Now I regret that,�
said Jadwiga Perzyna, who worked as a quality controller in the factory
for 35 years.
Still, the incident attracted media attention and perhaps spurred Labor
Minister Jerzy Hausner to act. He met with Gzik and Ozarow�s mayor,
Kazimierz Stachurski, on 3 December.
The situation has remained deadlocked, however. As the owner of the
factory, Tele-fonika had a full right to close it down and move
production elsewhere. It has also, a company press release reads,
�suffered from a sudden decrease in demand for telecommunication
cables.� The factory was, it says, too costly and uncompetitive, and its
employees were, at $850 per month on average, the best paid at any
Tele-fonika factory.
The protestors contest all of this. The factory was not closed for the
reasons the company gives. �The thing is that we never specialized in
telecommunication cables,� said Tomasz, one of the demonstrators. Nor
did the average employee get $850. �Maybe $500, that�s all. The average
got pumped up because it was calculated together with executive
salaries,� is the general opinion of the protesters. If they are right,
they earned less than the national average of $596 cited by Poland�s
national statistical office on 16 January.
But didn�t Tele-fonika offer 220 jobs at its other factories as soon as
it had moved the machinery? They snort at that. Gzik questions whether
there really were 220 jobs there, while Andrzej Zych, 19 years at the
factory--laid off together with his wife, who had worked there for 23
years--asks: �So, will I have to move to Szczecin while my wife stays
here? Could I maintain two flats? Poland is not America.�
Instead, the former employees are determined to remain in Ozarow to do
their own work, and to resurrect the factory. They have even formed
their own company, the New Cable Factory, with the goal of resuming
cable production.
How they plan to do that now that the plant�s equipment is being moved
out is a mystery. But then again, hope against hope is surely one
explanation why so many men and women have spent so many days on the
picket line.
The government itself can offer little hope. So far, Labor Minister
Hausner has only been able to propose that a special economic zone be
established in Ozarow with the help of the government�s Industry
Development Agency (ARP). It has the support of Ozarow�s local
authorities, with Mayor Stachurski claiming that five investors have
already shown an interest. Tele-fonika, for its part, has agreed to hand
over the factory premises to the ARP, which will then look for buyers.
But working on anything other than cable production elicits a resolute
�no� from the plant�s former employees. In any case, says Gzik, �this
deal does not guarantee us anything. These are only promises of work in
six, nine, maybe 12 months� time.� Moreover, even the mayor�s upbeat
forecasts suggest that only 250 to 300 jobs would be created in the new
zone.
Whether the plant�s old workers would have the skills for those jobs is
questionable. Former employees say all they can do is make cables, and
that is what they want to do. It is those old skills and their old
business that they pin their hopes on. �The factory can be
profitable--there are people and the technology to ensure that,� Gzik
asserts. �We have quality and environmental certificates. You can make
money here.�
The mayor echoes their sentiments: �There is no reason whatsoever, in
economical terms, to close it down.�
That is a notion dismissed by Tele-fonika�s spokesperson, Jerzy
Jurczynski. �The mayor is a politician and we are a company operating on
the cable market. What he is saying is a misunderstanding and clearly
misinforms public opinion.�
Tele-fonika�s view looks certain to prevail. The labor minister threw up
his hands in late December, saying, �I cannot do anything to relaunch
cable production in Ozarow. That is not in the government�s power.� The
future of cable production in Ozarow now rests in the hands of the
former employees and their new company. But restarting operations alone
would cost $4 million to $5 million, money that the picketers do not have.
The picketers, though, show little sign of burying their hopes, or their
factory. As Danuta Fitas, who spent 25 years in the factory as quality
controller, says: �We never say, �We worked here.� We still do.�
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
