Mieczysław Zygmunt Jagielski
Mieczysław Jagielski
A party official who contained crisis through concessions
On 22 August 1980, he accepted the strikers' demands in writing, formally opening negotiations between the government and the Gdańsk Inter-Factory Strike Committee.
Mieczysław Jagielski was a communist party and economic official of the Polish People's Republic, associated with agricultural policy and state planning. As strikes spread in 1980, he represented the government first in settling the July movement in Lublin and then in Gdańsk, where he signed the agreement that recognized independent trade unions. His career captures a regime trying to contain social demands through limited concessions, only to confront organized worker representation in public.
Career timeline
- 1946–1949Official, Union of Peasant Self-Help
- 1953–1956Head of the Central Committee Agriculture Department, PZPR
- 1959–1970Minister of Agriculture
- 1970–1981Deputy Prime Minister of the Polish People's Republic
- 1971–1975Chairman of the Planning Commission of the Council of Ministers
- 1971–1981Member of the PZPR Politburo
- 1980Government negotiator in the Lublin July strikes and Gdańsk August talks
- 1980–1981Government signatory to the Gdańsk Agreement