From LABOR-L@YORKU.CA Thu Aug 16 09:01:31 2001
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 01:14:17 -0400
Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <LABOR-L@YORKU.CA>
From: “Jim W. Jaszewski” <grok@SPRINT.CA>
Subject: 400 Protest Layoffs at Gdansk Shipyard, Birthplace of Solidarity
To: LABOR-L@YORKU.CA
400 Protest Layoffs at Gdansk Shipyard, Birthplace of Solidarity
Agence France Press, 15 August 2001
WARSAW, Aug 15, 2001—(Agence France Presse). Some 400 workers protested Tuesday against impending layoffs at the Gdansk shipyard, birthplace of the Solidarity trade union movement in August 1980 that led Poland's democratic revolution, PAP news agency reported.
Twenty-one years after workers occupied the factory to win the right to organize the first independent trade union in the communist world, workers gathered outside the shipyard's offices Tuesday to protest 500 layoffs announced for September.
“The meeting organized during work hours was illegal,” the shipyard's president Janusz Szlanta was quoted as saying by PAP.
Workers are due to consider calling a strike next week.
The Gdansk facility, now owned by the shipyard in the neighboring port city of Gdynia, is just a shadow of its former self, employing just 3,800 workers instead of 17,000 in 1980.