Lublin 1980 Strikes - Aftermath

Aftermath

In most cases, the government was willing to resolve the strikes in favor of the workers, by "buying them off", so long as the strikers did not demand independent trade unions. The last strikes in Lublin ended on July 25, after a delegation of the government, together with Mieczyslaw Jagielski, Jozef Pinkowski, and Zdzislaw Kurowski, agreed to most of the demands, such as free Saturdays, improvement in food supplies and earlier retirement age. The city was flooded with posters with appeals to the society for peace and return to work.

The events of Lublin July 1980 brought a final break in the official, Communist so-called "propaganda of success" that systematically exaggerated the country's economic performance to keep the population in line. Even though they did not result in the creation of an independent trade union, they generated momentum for more strikes which soon spread throughout the entire country - on July 23, a strike began in the Cegielski Factories in Poznań, in Warsaw's Fabryka Samochodów Osobowych, then in Łódź, Ostrów Wielkopolski, and other cities. The compromise on salaries, worked out in Lublin and Świdnik, triggered a chain reaction as other workers demanded similar concessions. The process could not be stopped. Three weeks later the strikes on the Baltic coast started and there the workers successfully demanded political concessions. The result was the formation of independent trade unions and the beginning of the Solidarity movement.