6.1 Introduction

Polish labour appeared to be uniquely powerful amongst labour movements in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) after 1989. The sources of this power were both political and economic. Politically, the trade union movement Solidarity was of course instrumental in the fall of communism in Poland and it acquired a talismanic status inside and outside Poland in the 1980s and early 1990s. Trade union movements throughout CEE, such as the Bulgarian trade union movement Podkrepa, explicitly sought to legitimize themselves by reference to Solidarity and to model their policies and approach on those of Solidarity. Western leaders , including Margaret Thatcher (then prime minister of Britain), praised Solidarity for its role in the development of democracy. Within Poland, the overwhelming success of Solidarity representatives in the 1989 elections and the subsequent election of Lech Walesa as president in 1990 appeared to confirm the power and status of the movement. Solidarity activists occupied key positions in postcommunist governments in 1989 “93 and 1997 “2001, and activists also played major roles at the local level. In the late 1990s Solidarity s political weight was institutionalized in the Solidarity “AWS electoral alliance, which was dominated by trade unionists. A further sign of the strong standing of labour was that even the successor trade union movement, OPZZ, enjoyed a substantial membership, despite the unpopularity of institutions tainted with communist origins in the postsocialist period.

To evaluate the unique position of Polish labour in the postsocialist period this chapter first provides a brief account of the employment relations system(s) emerging in Poland after 1989. It then assesses the extent to which the Polish labour movement has influenced the development of political and economic institutions since the fall of communism and can therefore justifiably be seen as an exception to the overall weakness of organized labour in postsocialist CEE. A brief concluding section locates Poland in the overall trends in international capitalism .