Interview with POR working class to win social identity and national independence in the countries under the domination of the totalitarian bureaucracy, especially the executive commission working class of the sister peoples of the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and Ukraine.
• It upholds proletarian internationalism in all its dimensions.
• It recognizes all international alliances contracted on a basis of sovereignty and calls for international cooperation based on the principles of equality, as well as of respect for security and national identity.
•It collaborates with all organizations, groups, structures and and activity do not conflict with the right of the working class to ownership of the enterprises.
•It regards as enemies and hostile to the interests of the working class any organization that opposes the right of the working class to ownership of the enterprises and will treat them in the same way that it treats the totalitarian bureaucracy.
• It rejects any agreement with the government of the bureaucracy, except one based on a full implementation of the demands included in the • It will not recognize any organization or social movement that wants to negotiate with the bureaucratic government on a basis of giving up any of the five demands working class, and it will consider any attempt of this sort as a betrayal of the interests of the working class. •It will disseminate the spread its organizations in other regions of the country in order to build a national organization of the • Since the ZRP PRO is a workers' organization, itself a representative of all of society or of other social groups and classes. It recognizes the social sovereignty of these groups or classes and their right to represent their own interests. It does not recognize the right of non-working-class organizations of a general social character to represent the interests of the working class. 16 member
What is the Alliance of the Workers' Opposition [POR] and why was it set up?
The POR is an alliance of various groupings within the Polish opposition movement. These vary in both size and form - some are large;
small; several represent the editorial boards of underground bulletins (it was four of these bulletins that originally launched the POR); while others are opposition organized at the level of plants, towns
The POR was set up with one simple aim in mind: to co-ordinate the activities of those in the opposition who believe ourselves firmly on the working class, both in our current struggles and in our strategy, in the political perspecwe present. Generally speaking, means a strategy of developing the self-organization of the working
I think the POR could be best described as that current in the opposisees the independent self-organization of the working class as the key to success in our coming struggles, and at the same time the key to solving Poland's political and economic crises.
How does the POR relate to all, as individuals, members of Solidarnosc, and all the component parts of the POR either developed out of old Solidarnosc structures or contacts, or were organized by Solidarnose activists. On the other hand, neither the POR itself, nor any of its constituent parts, are controlled by or responsible to the regional and national leadership bodies of Solidarnose that still exist. Some of the groups in the POR formally function as Solidarnosc structures, while others don't.
To understand the situation properly, you have to understand what Solidarnosc is today. I think the easiest way to explain that would be to say that Solidarnosc is simply the sum of the whole Polish opposition. With a very few minor exceptions, all groups in the opposition regard themselves as being part of Solidarnosc, that is they identify themselves with the legal mass movement that existed in 1980-81. But Solidarose is a very heterogenous movement. It includes the old leadership bodies, workplace groups in the factories and mines, new interfactory organizations that have sprung up since martial law, groups of people organized on a neighbourhood basis, and - perhaps most importantly a whole host of underground bulletins. I've no idea how many of these there are at present — the last figure I heard quoted was around 600 coming out regularly.
It's these bulletins that are the lifeblood of the opposition. Yet they represent widely differing political positions, which reflects growing politicization of the movement. Nevertheless, the essential unity expressed in the "Solidarnosc', has been maintained And of course the POR, as a current within the opposition and Solidarnose represents no threat to that unity. On the contrary, one of our basic aims is to strengthen the unity of the independent workers' movement.
Q. What do you mean by the "politicization" of the movement?
A. The term "politicization" is generally used in the Polish under-
International Viewpoint 2 June 1986
ground basis of to tions, they distinct reflection of within
In addition,
1981.
In forced tiating with it.
There is one of "politicizing something terative.
political this process began to differences
, most to the words, they a purely tradeand its failure however.
idea opposition. But that doesn't mean not involved in concrete
SO practical struggle.
As I've said, all the structures
Solidarnose structures or were organized by Solidarnose activists, mostly in the factories. And it's in the facinto tories that the vast majority of our work takes place. In contrast to many alif
That and that ineludes a significant section of the old leadership - we believe that struggle in the factories, mines in and shipyards is not something for
"muscle"
the future, even the very near future,
- but something for today.
the state bring after which the
This is in fact borne out by what is happening in Poland. Despite the go home and leave ntellectu als.
The tion in
POR com-
What have we fact that many leading day-to-day to combine activists in the factories have been political developed sacked, can't get new jobs, and are truggles with perspective. This means making the link between today's struggles and the hardship, scarcely a week goes by strategy we need for the working class some form of struggle or to achieve direct democratic control of protest action in at least one major and power over the economy and the factory, often in several.
In our opinion, this is what we have to build up, and all our efforts sounds very good.
are directed towards developing and but what does it mean in practice?
Your founding document, particular developing the
Platform of the Workers' Opposi workers' self-organization that they tion is very general There's a lot about strategy in it and a number of praiseworthy political principles, but
Most of the struggles you ve there's not much about the day-tomentioned don't get reported in day struggles you're talking about.
the West. The media is much more
That's true, but then interested in the latest statements of was precisely the purpose of the
Cardinal Glemp.
Walesa or
Could you tell me some more about to serve as a declaration of principles.
going on in the factories
At that time, when the being launched, the point was to strategy and positions that differentiate us from other currents in the strikes, lasting the security
A
A. K
17
Nevertheless, the vast majority of protest actions end in success. Apart from anything else the management is often reluctant to provoke any new conflict as their superiors would conclude they aren't in control of the situation. The workers themselves come out of these struggles with greater confidence in their own
Please don't think on the basis of what I've said that the workers are striking all over Poland today. The strikes I'm referring to have involved a relatively small percentage of Polish industry. Still, they have to be placed workers' movement suffered with the imposition of martial law. What we are now seeing is a revival of the combativity of the working class, although this process is only just beginning.
Another element in the situation that should be mentioned here is the of the workers' that enjoy the confidence of their workforce, that is the factories where the Party executive didn't manage to rig the elections. These councils have often become the opposition within factory, and many have taken a firm in defence of the workers' interests. Unfortunately, some sections of Solidarnose still taking advantage of the opportunities these councils present, although this attitude seems to be disappearing.
A notable example of what can be done is the struggle waged by two workers' councils - one in Torun and one in Bydgoszcz — at the end of last year. Apart from taking up the questions of pay and conditions, these councils also put forward more advanced demands.
The first was for workers' coun to have the right to organize and the second was for the establishSejm [parliament], to be composed of workers' council representatives. The state power was forced to mount a big propaganda campaign against even publishing attacks on them in the press, although the usual policy is to maintain a wall of silence on this kind of thing.
As regards what we in the POR are doing, the easiest thing for me to do here is to refer you to a recent document of ours: the POR's Program of Current Struggle. We published this as a special edition of our national bulletin Przelom [Breakthrough], and we have been distributing it through-
It reflects the experience of the POR, and what we are doing, or want to do, in the factories. It also represents the strategy we are propposing for the movement as a whole. 18 campaigning for a united front around the two main slogans of the program: the defence of living standards and the defence of the national economy. The defence of living standards is the basic are two major problems. The first is inflation, which has hit all working people very hard since martial law. In fact, they are still suffering the consequences of the unprecedented price rises at the beginning of 1982, when many basic necessities went up several hundred per cent. This has been compounded by inflation of 20 per cent to 30 per cent every year since. The concrete effect of all this has been a substantial increase number of working-class families living in absolute and a situation where the vast majority of working people get by from month to month, but have no savings whatsoever and no chance of replacing the working class is being condemned to a vegetable existence.
second problem is that of income differentials. The strategy of the ruling bureaucracy since martial law has been to increase these radically, in line with their overall policy of "divide and rule"
Our reply to inflation is to demand automatic cost-of-living adjustments, otherwise known as a sliding scale of wages. In fact our demands are broader, since we are calling for a sliding security benefits and students' grants. As to income differentials, we calling for automatic additional increases for the lower paid in all wage
The next question is that of working time. Since martial law, the state power has mounted an intensive campaign to increase working hours, involving the introduction of compulsory overtime, a return to the six-day working week, the statutory lengthening of the working week in selected enterprises, the broader introduction of continuous shift systems and so on. The enormous paradox here is that few workers have enough to do within the standard working week, due to the disruption of produc tion caused by bureaucratic mismanagement.
We are demanding a reduction in working hours, particularly for working women and those in the heaviest and most hazardous jobs, who normally also have to work the long est, since they are employed in "key" branches of industry. This reduction of working hours cannot, of course, involve any loss of pay. The state power's present policy amounts to shifting the burden of their own incompetence onto the working class, in a desperate attempt to increase the rate of exploitation.
Another issue we're paying a lot of attention to is housing, which is undoubtedly the number one social problem in Poland. Up to now the opposition has done very little on this, which we think is a big mistake. The POR is involved in organizing struggles around this question, and these have had a big response. We've also managed to draw other sections of Solidarnose into work on this. The first thing I should explain, however, is the importance of the problem.
Getting a flat is the biggest problem facing young people in Poland. Many young couples, including ones with two or three children, have to share a flat with parents, grand-parents, brothers and sisters or other relatives. And the brothers or sisters are often married, with children of their own. The prospects of getting a flat are very remote. It has been estimated that, in certain cities, if the pace of housing construction stays the same, those at the bottom of the housing list will get a flat in 30 or 35 years time!
On the other hand, the select elite have no problems. Those with money - owners of private businesses, for example - can afford to build their own luxury villas. Those with International Viewpoint 2 June 1986
contacts - people in the bureaucratic
- are given flats by their apparatus place of work or admitted into subsidized small "co-operatives",
, building semi-detached houses for the privi-
IN ITS ISSUE No. 35, 1986, Wolny Robotnik, the organ of the Workers' leged few.
Opposition Alliance (POR) reports that in February the political police broke
A full solution to this problem up the print shop in which the paper was put out and, during the operation, through is possible social only identified the main leader of the Union of Workers' Councils of the Polish control of the management of housing
Resistance Movement (ZRP PRO) of Upper Silesia, Damian Dziubelski resources and of the construction industry and a workers' plan for
Dziubelski had to go underground. Immediately after that, he was elected construction.
chair of the Executive Committee of the POR.
moment, we are demanding a general
A 27-year-old worker, Dziubelski comes from a working-class family.
on rents, the abolition of
Before the declaration of the state of war in December 1981, he was chairsub-standard person of Solidarnosc in the waterworks in the city of Ruda Slaska, where he housing (in some cases, the payment additional hardship allowance
In 1982, as a result of his work in the Committee to Aid the Persecuted, he was interned. In the detention camp he gained the recognition of his comrades by his refusal to submit to the repressive apparatus. Because of his firm private businessmen attitude, he was subjected to several severe penalties.
KS.
After being released from the camp, Dziubelski took part in founding and
We are also involved in more building the ZRP PRO. He was arrested several times, questioned and fired against the from his job — "the daily bread of the Polish political reality," he used to helping to ses, organize rent strikes. This particular
On two occasions Dziubelski managed to escape by jumping out of a form of struggle can be launched window when the police came to his home to arrest him.
easily, involves little risk of victimi-
Wolny Robotnik describes him as a conscious fighter "for the workers"
zation and usually proves very effective. What we have also found is that who might hold back from other protest actions are willing to get involved in struggles this on which simply reflects the scale and depth of the problem.
esting fact here: a recently published official report on living conditions in
1984 stated that only 69 per cent of working class families had their own corresponding civil servants was 97 per cent!
I should also mention certain other questions we're campaigning around, such as the fight for equal opportunities for youth. This involves the efits and of rants for all those over school-leaving age in fulldemand also increased funding for the social services, at the expense of the bureauthe army, police
Both these questions involve the defence of
Q. In talking about the program the POR is putting forward at the moment, you also mentioned a second point:
the defence of the economy. I don't really national understand what by you mean that. In fact, it seems a rather strange the kind the government slogan, might put forward.
The state power talks of the
A.
It national economy all the time.
talks of "accelerating the economy's
"carrying out further development", economy", improvements to the the intensification of
"consolidating the economy" and so on. What we are talking about is defending the
International Viewpoint 2 June 1986
Damian Dziubelski
("Dawid").
worked as a truck driver.
right to a decent life and socialism." national economy - defending it the state bureaucratic power, defending it from the party bosses and the management in the factories.
Poland's economic resources - its and machinery, its mineral infrastructure, the skills of its working being squandered and devastated before our very eyes.
We believe there are three basic reasons for this: first, appalling bureaucratic mismanagement from the the the individual mine or factory; second, the current economic strategy, which amounts to the deliberate application of "robber economy" in a desperate attempt to increase production and service the foreign debt; and thirdly, corrupriminal incompetence.
These are things every worker sees all around him or her every day. When you add it all up, it looks like a conscious policy of governmental, ministerial and managerial sabotage. A Polish worker puts in an eight- or even ten-hour shift in the mines, factories or shipyards, only to see the work obstructed by organizational chaos, the products of labour wasted, expensive machinery left forgotten and rusting in the yard.
Workers also feel the financially, productivity bonuses because obsolete supplies don't turn up or there's another power simply because management can't allow production to be higher that month, as it would set a bad precedent and might mean the factory was given increased norms
In this situation, our call for the corresponds to the gut feeling of the working class. For 40 years, the workers have been told that the factories belong to them, that the whole economy, the whole state is theirs.
are seeing their economy being ruined by waste and corruption. They are working longer than they have to, to produce less than they could, and what they produce is of worse quality seeing Polish industry go into rapid decay, with much of it simply falling apart.
investment has primarily been channelled into showcase projects, with little basic modernization. As a result, factory buildings are crumbling, production lines are being held together by string, saliva, or the ingenuity of the workers concerned, and the average age of industrial machinery is increasing year
Our strategic objective is for the workers to take control of the means of production. But the way are going at present, once they do so there could be very little left to
What we are proposing is a comprehensive program of action to expose managerial waste and corruption, to fight against it and to lay the basis for the rational use of Poland's economic resources once these are under the democratic control
19
There are probably too many of these to go into all of them. The most obvious involve political and democratic freedom, defence against so on. However, the central axis of the demands we raise we are fighting for within the movement is undoubtedly
This is the key to understanding all the demands I've already mentioned, which are by no means purely economic, but deeply political. All of them are linked to the establishment of selforganization in the workplace, in the neighbourhoods and at the interfactory level.
example, the question of automatic cost-of-living increases and
"equalizing" for the lower paid involves the establishment of "statistical commissions" to calculate the effects of inflation on working-class families and analyse wage differentials.
The problem of housing and the tactic of the rent strike poses the question of independent committees. Preparing for future conbureaucratic
Police harass commemorators of Warsaw ghetto uprising (DR) of the workers themselves. This means campaigning in defence of social property - in defence of the plant, machinery and raw materials the party "on the side" to apparatchiks destroy and sell off the private sector, in defence of the enterprises they ruin and defraud.
It means campaigning for proper quality standards, ones that conform to the expectations of Polish society. At present, the system of generalized piecework and ludictrously high production norms leads to immense waste in the form of useless, substandard products, since the only way the workers can gain a decent wage is to ignore all quality standards, which supervisory staff usually encourage them to do.
It also means campaigning rational organization of production and a rational use of working time, which is integrally connected with our fight for a reduction of working hours. We have no illusions that these problems can be solved within the present bureaucratic system of planning and management. But the fight has to start now.
One aspect of all this that merits special attention is the question of health and safety, which is both a function of the lack of adequate safeguards in the shape of legal trade unions and of the organization of production itself.
Health and safety standards in Polish industry are disastrous, an absolute parody of the legislation on this question, which is ignored as a matter of course. The POR is 20 mounting a campaign on this, utilisuccessful experiences of workers who have gone into struggle on this question and popularizing the strike". This simply means rigorous observance of the existing regulawhich in virtually all Polish factories - and undoubtedly in all the mines - means bringing produc
In addition, we are putting forward the more general yet critically important demand of the complete accessibility of all economic and financial information, enterprise to the Goverment Planning Commission. This includes all foreign trade agreements and the detailed budgets of all Party and other political organizations, surreptitiously financed from the wealth produced by the working people.
Finally, we preparation of alternative economic plans at plant level. Experience has shown that the workers are already capable of drawing up plans that both rationalize the production process and improve working paves the way for the workers continuing production during occupations and lays a solid basis for the future preparation of workers? plans of production gions, industries and the country
So far, you have been talking about economic questions. What about the strictly political questions the POR is taking up?
power involves both commissions to work out alternative economic and the establishment of guards to defend the factories, and so
Finally, how do you see the POR developing?
A. I don't want to make any predictions, factor here is the development of the mass struggle. What I can say, though, is that the reception ideas have been getting indicates that our current should continue to grow within the Polish social movement.
Internally, I know many of militants and structures participating in the POR will be developing specifically political work, including the creation of revolutionary organizations and parties.
At this time, a new branch of our current is developing — the political groups of the Alliance of the Workers' Opposition. They are based on revolutionary democratic socialism and are accumulating political forces of the workers' revolutionary left. For example, one of our bulletins, Front Robotniczy [Workers' Front] is now the organ of such political groups of the POR in the Warsaw region. However, as I said before, this is seen as an extension of mass work, not a substitute for it.
In general, I think the POR is making steady progress in developing a revolutionary strategy for the whole social movement, and as the effects of the defeat suffered during martial law wear off, that strategy should gain wider acceptance.
International Viewpoint 2 June 1986