LITMIR.BIZ

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documentation so that the council could perform its oversight functions and be available to answer its questions about the state of the enterprise. In addition, the councils had the right to stop a director’s decision if it was contrary to a prior council’s decision, if it was taken without consulting the council when such consultation was required, or if it was taken without the council’s approval when such approval was required. Finally, the council had the right to hire and dismiss the enterprise director. These legal prerogatives of the workers’ councils would give organized labor the resources necessary to shape privatization policies in the post-1989 period.

      Once granted, the procedural concessions proved difficult to rescind. Unlike in earlier periods, by the 1980s the continuing economic crises had left the regime with few resources to grant substantive concessions while withdrawing procedural ones. Since it could no longer make material side payments, the party found it politically difficult to abrogate the powers of the workers’ councils as it had two decades earlier. Hence, although the regime suspended workers’ councils when martial law was imposed in December 1981, within a year they were reactivated. Studies conducted among workers at the time indicated tremendous interest in reviving self-management. According to one survey, more than 83 percent of workers viewed self-management as very important and believed that it should be reinstituted as quickly as possible.³⁰ In fact, by 1983, self-management was reactivated in 78.4 percent of enterprises, and by 1986 workers’ councils were operating in 95 percent of companies. The councils had tremendous support among employees of state enterprises: 62.3 percent of workers wanted to have councils in their places of employment and a majority believed the councils would ensure that workers’ interests were adequately represented. Most workers also thought that the councils should play a more important role in the decision-making process at the enterprise level and have a direct role in policy making at the national level.³¹ Rather than attempting to take away these valued prerogatives, the regime sought to reduce the threat the councils posed to its monopoly on power.

      To prevent the reemergence of an independent opposition network, the regime tried to prevent contact between councils in different enterprises. As a report prepared by the then illegal Solidarity trade union stated, “All attempts at communication and coordination between workers’ councils in different enterprises are the subject of special interest to the security services. Seeking to atomize the self-management movement the regime blocks all independent activity of the workers’ councils in this area.”³² This strategy was unsuccessful and workers’ councils cooperated with each other, coordinated responses on issues affecting workers, and remained very popular among workers themselves.³³ In addition, the attitude of the underground Solidarity toward workers’ councils began to change fundamentally. Although initially the union tried to boycott the councils, arguing that they were little more than another attempt by the regime to control workers, by 1985 the boycott was applied only selectively and in many enterprises that did not have workers’ councils Solidarity activists tried to establish them.³⁴

      Although Solidarity was disbanded in 1982, the new trade union law adopted that same year reflected the regime’s recognition that it had to extend far-reaching concessions to organized labor if it wanted workers to return to its support coalition. The new law had profound consequences for the ability of trade unions to influence policy. It gave trade unions more rights and greater independence from the state and from management within individual enterprises. These changes were a direct result of the demands that came out of the August 1980 strikes and the agreements between the government and Solidarity. The new law gave the unions the right to evaluate and give opinions on all legal acts and decisions that affected the rights and interests of workers as well as the right to participate in the process of formulating new legal acts and decisions. They also had the right to evaluate the wage policies and work environment.³⁵ These legal changes meant that trade unions had access to all relevant information about the socioeconomic situation in the country. On the enterprise level, trade unions now had the right to represent and defend workers on issues of wages and working conditions. In addition, the new law gave unions the right to sign collective work agreements on the national level. Finally, the law once again legalized strikes, albeit with restrictions. Along with the legal prerogatives that workers’ councils acquired in this period, these legislative changes expanded organized labor’s resources and significantly increased their capacity to influence policy making in the post-1989 period.

      In other words, in many ways the imposition of martial law was not quite the victory for the regime as it first appeared. Initially, the jailing of many labor activists and the disbanding of Solidarity appeared to restore the PZPR’s control over the political situation. Although during the first couple of years following December 1981 there were sporadic demonstrations and protests, with time these became less and less frequent and society as a whole withdrew from political activism. Yet not only were many of the procedural concessions granted during the Solidarity period enshrined in law, but the inability of the party elite to devise a consensus concerning the political and economic course of action meant that the economic situation continued to deteriorate.

      Ironically, Solidarity, which unlike other Eastern and Central European trade unions was never financially dependant on the state, was able to tap into additional financial resources after it was delegalized. Various organizations funneled money and equipment to the organization. For example, in 1986 alone, the New York–based Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe in cooperation with the Soros Foundation offered two hundred thousand dollars in assistance to Polish intellectuals and activists. In 1982–83, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is estimated to have provided Solidarity with close to $8 million and the National Endowment for Democracy in 1989 provided about $1 million to help Polish workers. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) was also one of Solidarity’s biggest foreign supporters, providing large assistance programs.³⁶ Thus, although delegalized, Solidarity continued to increase its financial resource base.

      The shift in the balance of power away from the regime was amply demonstrated by the embarrassing defeat in the fall of 1987 of a government-sponsored referendum on an economic restructuring program. How problematic any reform measures would be was further underscored when, after a number of years of industrial peace, strikes broke out again in the spring of 1988. Although the immediate cause of the strike was demands for wage increases, the protests quickly acquired a political coloring when activists from the disbanded Solidarity took charge over the strike. While these protests were defused, in August of the same year a new wave of strikes swept the country.³⁷ The growing worker unrest underscored what Wojciech Jaruzelski’s more moderate PZPR faction had recognized for some time, namely, that without establishing a dialogue with the opposition there was little hope of bringing the country’s economy around. Later that year, first discussions were held between Wałęsa and representatives of the regime, eventually leading to what became the Roundtable negotiations that laid the groundwork for Poland’s political transition in the summer of 1989. As we shall see in Chapter 4, the contentious encounters between state and labor, which punctuated the country’s post–World War II history, left organized labor with important recourse—legal, financial, and experiential—that allowed it to significantly shape economic reform policies in the years following the transition.

      Internal PZPR Dynamics

      Conflicts between state and labor were a persistent feature of post–World War II Polish political dynamics. Workers took to the streets when living standards were threatened by deteriorating economic conditions and rising prices. More important, although the regime did not hesitate to repress these expressions of worker discontent, it also tended to fulfill many of the demands put forth by protesters. Initially, most of the concessions the regime offered were substantive in nature and entailed primarily wage and consumer subsidy increases. Later, it extended increasingly significant procedural concessions that weakened its control over organized labor and provided labor with important legal prerogatives as well as rich experience in successfully confronting the state. Thus, unlike its counterpart in neighboring Czechoslovakia, the Polish party elite struggled to maintain political control over organized labor, in the end failing to retain workers within its coalition of support. The internal dynamics of the PZPR shed light on why the party did not succeed

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