Labour Union (Poland)

Labour Union (Poland)

The Labour Union (Polish: Unia Pracy, UP) is a minor social-democratic political party in Poland. It is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Socialist International.

Labour Union was formed in June 1992. The party contested the 1993 parliamentary elections, obtaining 7.28% of the popular vote and had 41 representatives elected to the lower house, Sejm. In the following parliamentary elections of 1997, the UP received only 4.74% of votes, thereby falling short of the required 5% threshold for election to the Sejm. At the 2001 parliamentary elections, the UP entered into an electoral alliance with the larger social-democratic party Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), and managed to get 16 of its members elected to parliament. Some of those subsequently left the UP to join the newly-created Social Democracy of Poland (SDPL), a splinter group of the SLD. In May 2004, the UP signed an alliance with SDPL, in which both parties agreed to jointly contest the following parliamentary elections under the SDPL banner, and to support Marek Borowski in his fight for the Polish presidency in 2005. At the 2005 parliamentary elections, the SDPL gained only 3.9% of the vote, which was insufficient for the alliance to achieve parliamentary representation.

In 2006, the UP joined the SLD, SDPL and the liberal Democratic Party – demokraci.pl to form an electoral alliance of centre and centre-left parties, named Left and Democrats (LiD), for the upcoming local government elections. This electoral alliance was maintained for the 2007 parliamentary elections, and LiD came in third with 13.2% of the vote, which saw 53 of its candidates elected to the Sejm. Unfortunately for UP, the party was the only one of the four component parties of the LiD alliance not to have any of its candidates elected.