Activities and affiliations

Social movements and organizing Free Trade Unions of the Coast (WZZ) 1929–2010 ✕ Killed in crash

From fired shipyard worker to 'mother of independent Poland'

On the strike's third day, after Wałęsa declared it over, she and Alina Pienkowska blocked the gates and turned the workers back, transforming a pay dispute into a solidarity strike.

A crane operator at the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard whose dismissal in August 1980 set off the strike that became Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Eastern Bloc. She worked sixteen years as a welder, exceeded 270% of her output quota and was honored as a Hero of Socialist Labor, but after publicly accusing a supervisor of embezzling the workers' fund she faced secret-police harassment and became an open dissident. On the strike's third day, after Wałęsa declared it over, she and Alina Pienkowska ran to turn the workers back from the gates and transformed a pay dispute into a solidarity strike. She later broke with Wałęsa, denouncing his 'cult of personality' and the union's drift from its founding ideals, and died in the 2010 Smolensk air crash.

Social movements and organizing Solidarity (Solidarność) 1935–2014 ○ Natural causes

A shipyard leader caught between two landmark agreements

“The chairman will be Jurczyk,” and the delegates answered the decision with applause.

Marian Jurczyk was a shipyard worker and labor leader who brought Szczecin's August 1980 strike into negotiations with the state. He signed the Szczecin Agreement on 30 August, accepting economic concessions without a guarantee of free trade unions, while the broader Gdańsk settlement the next day made the contrast between the two ports historically clear. Interned and later arrested under martial law, he went on to pursue an independent union course outside Lech Wałęsa's camp.

Social movements and organizing Solidarity (Solidarność) 1937–2023 ○ Natural causes

The union leader whose arrest sparked the Wujek strike

When news of his arrest reached Wujek on 13 December 1981, the miners decided not to work until he returned.

Jan Ludwiczak was a miner and chairman of the Wujek mine works committee of Poland's Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity. His detention became the immediate trigger for the miners' strike against martial law and their demand for the release of detained union activists. After his release, he endured demotion and surveillance while distributing underground publications at the mine, and in 1989 helped prepare Solidarity's restoration.

Social movements and organizing Solidarity (Solidarność) 1944–

A Solidarity leader beaten while linking workers’ and farmers’ demands

“You have to call them and try to persuade them to leave the building. It is very important and very urgent.”

Jan Rulewski was a Polish trade-union leader and democracy activist who headed Solidarity in the Bydgoszcz region. In 1981 he made farmers’ demand for an independent union a union-wide issue, and on 19 March he was beaten by militia during a session of the provincial council. The incident helped Solidarity organize a nationwide warning strike and exposed the tensions that preceded martial law. He was later interned under martial law and served in parliament after Poland’s democratic transition.

Social movements and organizing Solidarity (Solidarność) 1949–

The Solidarity strategist who planned the 1980 Gdańsk strike, shaped the 21 Demands, and co-founded the MKS

In the Lenin Shipyard, in the course of implementing Lenin's theory, we folded up Marxism-Leninism.

He was the principal organiser of the August 1980 strike at the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard: he drew up the strike plan, grouped and ranked the Twenty-One Demands, and co-founded the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee (MKS), making him the architect of the event that gave birth to Solidarity. When martial law was declared in December 1981, he evaded internment and spent more than four years underground rebuilding Solidarity's clandestine networks, once attending his daughter's baptism disguised as a woman. Arrested in 1986 and released under amnesty, he later served as a member of parliament, Deputy Interior Minister, and Marshal of the Senate; in July 2010 he made Polish history as the shortest-serving acting president, holding the office for only a few hours.

Social movements and organizing Solidarity (Solidarność) 1957–

The shipyard worker who helped launch independent unionism

“We had been preparing for the strike for seven days, and the day came when it had to begin here in the shipyard.”

Jerzy Borowczak was a young Gdańsk shipyard worker who helped open the way to Poland's independent trade-union movement in 1980. With Bogdan Felski and Ludwik Prądzyński, he launched the strike on 14 August, demanding Anna Walentynowicz's reinstatement, higher wages, and a memorial to the victims of 1970. He continued resisting after martial law, enduring internment and dismissal before returning to the shipyard in 1989.