Background
The widespread strikes of 1980 were far from being the first clashes between the ruling Party and the working class in Poland after WWII. Despite having a “socialist” government, the elite of the Polish ruling class averaged an income twenty times that of the blue-collar worker. This elite ruling class owned or largely controlled the police, media, and industry of the state, including the state-organized unions. Insufficient pay and food shortages, in addition to a growing movement in favor of independent union activism led to strikes in 1956 and 1970 which left hundreds of workers dead from clashes with police, and both the 1970 and 1976 strikes ended with some concessions but subsequent additional repressions from management. Workers were increasingly dissatisfied with their standard of living and the half-hearted responses of the government to their calls for social justice, and when in July 1980 the government attempted to raise the price of meat even further, sit-in strikes start up again.
Read more about this topic: Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee
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