Solidarity's 2nd Congress reflects impasse of workers' leadership

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Second National Solidarity Congress lacked the atmosphere of excitement and hope By ROD GDANSK, Poland-The independent, self-governing trade union "Solidarity"-potentially the most powerful workers' movement in the world—held its second national congress here on April 19-24. It had been close to nine years since its first congress.

Things have changed. In September 1981, delegates represented 9.8 million workers; today, 2 million. Then, the congress took 18 days; today, six.

Then, thousands of workers milled around inside and outside the arena as the congress went eyeball to eyeball with General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Today, the workers of the Gdansk region watch the reports on TV.

Then, Jaruzelski was plotting martial law rule and repression. Today, he is president of a coalition government between Solidarity and the Stalinist bureaucracy; his prime minister is a man he had jailed years before as a Solidarity adviser.

Then, the congress logo, boasting its youth, was a plump toddler; today, an umbrella, the symbol of an all-inclusive organization.

For the foreign press, things have also changed. Right at the start we were told, "Last time [in 1981] many things were free. Now you have to pay for everything. Indeed, it cost us 500,000 zlotys each, payable in U.S. dollars, to get our press passes. That's about two weeks' pay for the average industrial worker.

Official observers, invited guests, and the press occupied about half of the balcony seating in the Olivia Hall, which housed the first congress as well. Several thousand seats remained empty. We saw no provisions for the general public. There were no pressing crowds. The parking lot was mostly empty with just a few people coming and going.

Was this the national congress of Solidarity? Was this the same organization that had emerged from seven years of underground existence to sweep last year's national elections, having shamed the ruling Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) from the political stage?

Issues before the congress For us, the top questions were: Was Solidarity going to create its own political party and forge ahead to take state power? How was Solidarity going to deal with the pressure from the working class driven to the wall by the Balcerowicz austerity plan? And how was Solidarity to deal with privatization, co-management, and the rights of employers?

The debates on these and other points were woven throughout the agenda under the heading of "The Draft Program." Every scheduled interruption thus enabled delegates to confer during the breaks. It also made the debate very difficult to follow as it stretched out to five days.

The congress decided to not form any political party of its own-much less march with the working class to the Belvedere Palace. It also rejected formulations that constrained Solidarity to be strictly a trade union; that is, an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the worker against the employer (state or private) and reject any direct role in the government.

Instead, the congress adopted the same ambiguous formula that it had used with such effect during the past 10 years: Solidarity was to be a union for all workers and a social movement. This was the formula used by Lech Walesa to organize the Civic Committees which elected to parliament not only members of Solidarity but independent pro-Solidarity people as well.

Although the congress press office didn't say, it would be safe to guess that 10 percent or more of the delegates were members of either the parliament (Sejm) or the new Senate. In the July 1989 elections, the Solidarity-organized Civic Committees took 134 of the 135 open seats.

In reality, these Civic Committees are a powerful nationwide political bloc, beholden to Solidarity. They may even use its name and logo if permission is given by the regional Solidarity executive commission.

But in an important sense, these committees—which after all are not part of Solidarity-have been overlooked. The congress left town without setting any rules to regulate them. One and only one such committee, a national one, is allowed by the "round table" agreements and its head is a Walesa appointee. Who is responsible for the politics of these diverse, independent, and very much political organizations?

There are hundreds of these committees organized in every town and county in Poland and regional elections are coming up. Who's watching the store? The 1990 congress of Solidarity did not answer this question.

What about the workers?

What is Solidarity to do for the workers and peasants in desperate straits? Poland's economic woes, which began in the late '70's, have worsened into the '90's, with no end in sight.

Per-capita income was $4700 in 1983; in 1986 it was $2000. We have no later figures, but inflation is a clue. In 1983, the zloty traded at 100 to the dollar. In March of 1989, when the bank began to buy and sell hard currency, the rate was 3000 to 1, and only one year later, the rate was 9400 zlotys for one dollar.

At that rate, an average worker brings home about the equal of $100 per month, one fourth of the 1983 rate. These are conditions under which the Polish working class has been known to explode-as the union knows.

Leszek Balcerowicz, Poland's finance minister and Solidarity's very own man, presented a long-range economic plan to the present government's council of ministers which was adopted. He defended this plan before the congress on April 23.

Balcerowicz's plan didn't fall from the sky. Poland is in debt to the West to the tune of $39 billion. During and after the "round table" discussions that led to the legalization of Solidarity, Poland had been visited in sequence by David Rockefeller, a group of World Bank experts, a group from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Bush, and the EEC (the European Economic Community).

All of this took place during the five months in which the hard-core Stalinist president, Jaruzelski, was gracefully handing key ministries-the ministry of finance in particular-to the new prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity man and intellectual.

Food subsidies are gone. Subsidies to exporting industries are gone. Unemployment has arrived on a grand scale. So the Balcerowicz plan smells like the standard IMF plan despite being dressed up anew for Polish conditions.

Simply put, the IMF plan is to reduce the consumption of the workers and thus increase the surplus product, which in turn is divided up—a large chunk going to the banks and what's left going to purchase new and better capital equipment.

What is supposed to happen next is that the increasing capital wealth of the nation results in an increase in the productivity of labor-and thus the light at the end of the tunnel. So it is hoped.

Baicerowicz has his version. backs him. On the floor of the congress Walesa appealed to the delegates:

"Everybody complains. But I have asked all of you to bring your plans forward, and nobody did. I asked the professional economists of this nation to bring forward their plans. No one did. I think the plan will work. We've got to stop complaining about a plan that has been in operation for months now. Instead, we must deal with the social problems of the poverty and unemployment that were predicted all along." •99 Where will the money come from?

Walesa gave a brave and clever speech, but the hall was quiet. Where was the money to deal with these problems to come from? Delegates pointed out that dues received were insufficient to keep the organization afloat.

They said it was false that regional commissions were holding back dues. They pointed out that it was hard to collect dues from workers whose real incomes were onefourth of what they'd been no more than five years ago. Hadn't Walesa himself stated this sad truth from the podium on April 23? Didn't he say?:

"There is a political benefit, to be sure [with Solidarity's electoral victory in 1989.] But those who have supported us have no other benefits whatsoever. They work hard. It's grueling. They work 12 hours a day. They work three or four shifts. We have not won anything in the economic and social spheres." [speaker's emphasis] It was stated from the floor that even Solidarity's second congress could not have been held were it not for a gift of $35,000 from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the well-known joint venture of the AFL-CIO and the U.S. State Department.

The national commission admitted that 40 out of every 41 zlotys received came from abroad, principally from the United States. The delegates protested and set self-financing as a top goal. Underlining their commitment to this resolution, they proceeded to cut the size of the national commision from 122 to 96, thus eliminating 26 cushy jobs at the top.

Contradictory resolutions adopted The delegates accepted the Balcerowicz plan, but they then did their best to make up for it. They provided for a union of the unemployed, set up a commission to negotiate a minimum wage with the government, opened up union membership to anyone who sells his or her labor power, and set a policy goal of eliminating bonuses and piecework payments in any compensation package.

They also asserted their right to strikeeven though the language of the resolution discouraged resorting to strikes, pledging instead to "deal with conflicts by means of negotiations and agreements." The right to call sympathy strikes was also asserted. This represented a break with the "round table" agreements, under which the Solidarity leaders accepted the introduction of a clause limiting the right to strike into the statutes of the union.

A roaring majority of delegates, moreover, voted to remove an appendix to the "round table" agreement that granted special recogniSOCIALIST I tion to the Communist Party (PUWP).

All of this, as laudible as it was, did not address the central economic issues. Everybody in the hall automatically assumed that the $39 billion owed to imperialist banks had to be repaid. The only suggestion we heard that was different was from a delegate who said that all the Communist Party people should be shipped to Russia and their property sold to the Western banks. It would have been funny except the topic was so grim.

The congress thus neither condemned the government's harsh austerity plan nor embraced it. It stood at a distance and declared its intention to do what it could to defend the worker from the shocking economic disaster. Nothing more.

The congress was preoccupied with schemes for attracting Western capital. Prosperity would come with the flood of dollars, which, with the government operating in the workers' interests, would not be wasted as in the past but would transform productivity in industry and agriculture.

There's a certain truth to all that—if you don't have to pay the money back. Shares are to be sold to the workers and to the West. Since the workers don't have much money (the Balcerowicz plan will see to that pervaded first congress in 1981.

that) workers can buy shares at half price. That's one scheme. There are many.

Approved privatizations

The congress approved privatization in principle, assuming that heavy industry would remain state dominated. It agreed that employers other than the state would have to be given rights as employers. Legislation would have to be prepared.

In the future it was felt that Solidarity could work through the existing workers' councils to "co-manage" the enterprise. Workers councils already existed and just needed duties to carry out. This strategem would allow Solidarity to offer suggestions-even lead—in the enterprise's affairs without being responsible.

By keeping at this symbolic distance, Solidarity could criticize, bargain, and strike without an undue conflict of interest. That was the thinking behind a pretty vague strategy and was accepted piecemeal and reluctantly by the delegates.

The free market was accepted with some exceptions. The peasantry were going to need help as all their costs had skyrocketed; if they passed these increases on with price hikes, nobody could afford to buy. Export industries were also going to need subsidies if they were to sell at competitive prices abroad and avoid bankruptcy at home.

After 10 years, the bloom is off the rose. The crisis of leadership of the Polish working class is out in the open for all to see. The slogan of the Solidarity leadership "Austerity now for prosperity later. Believe us!"-has already worn thin.

Whatever gains have been made, moreover, are more apparent than real. The Communist Party (PUWP), once 3-million strong, has become a rump party. It is now called the Social Democrats of the Republic of Poland (SDRP), numbering barely 50,000. But the Stalinist bureaucrats are still heading up government offices, the police stations, and the army barracks, locally and nationally.

The Polish workers have no choice but to bring up a new leadership that will sweep the encrusted Stalinists bureaucrats in the gutter and install a government in their own name, based on a democratically run and controlled planned economy.

PTION JUNE 1990