1953–
The tram driver who carried the strike beyond the shipyard
On 15 August 1980, she stopped her tram near the Baltic Opera, helping set Gdańsk’s public-transport strike in motion.
Henryka Krzywonos was a Gdańsk tram driver and trade-union activist who connected action inside the shipyard with workers across the city. On 15 August 1980 she stopped her tram, helping launch the public-transport strike and spread the news that encouraged solidarity action in other workplaces. She represented transport workers in the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee, signed the August Agreement, and later aided internees and distributed underground publications during martial law. Her later work running a family children’s home and serving in parliament linked shop-floor action with care and institutional politics.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1973–1978Tram driver, Provincial Transport Company, Gdańsk
- 1978–1979Crane-equipment operator, Gdańsk Shipyard
- 1979–1980Tram driver, Provincial Transport Company, Gdańsk
- 1980Presidium member of the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee, transport representative
- 1980Signatory of the Gdańsk August Agreement
- 1981–1989Aid to internees and underground publishing during martial law
- 1994–2009Director of a family children’s home, Gdańsk
- 2015–현재Member of the Sejm, eighth, ninth and tenth terms
- 2019–현재Work on women’s and children’s rights and social policy
Related historical events
August 1980: from a halted tram to the August Agreement
On 15 August 1980, driving tram line 15 through Gdańsk, Krzywonos stopped her car near the Baltic Opera and told her passengers, "This tram goes no further." The stop is often treated as the starting point of the Gdańsk public-transport strike, though some witness accounts hold that bus drivers had already refused to run that morning and that she joined a strike already under way. Polish Wikipedia notes both readings: the stop is sometimes described as the beginning of the strike, while other witnesses place her joining an action in progress.
The next day, 16 August, after Lech Wałęsa announced an agreement with shipyard management and the end of the strike, Krzywonos joined Alina Pienkowska, Anna Walentynowicz and Ewa Ossowska in stopping workers leaving the shipyard at Gate No. 3. The move kept part of the crew inside and allowed the solidarity strike with other Tri-City enterprises to continue. IPN Gdańsk materials record the episode through Pienkowska's activity, naming Walentynowicz and Ossowska as acting with her at Gate No. 3, and credit the women's action with contributing to the decision to continue the solidarity strike.
Krzywonos sat in the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee (MKS) as the transport representative and became a member of its presidium. The Metropolitanka biography states that she and Andrzej Gwiazda conducted negotiations on the release of political prisoners, as a result of which Jacek Kuroń and other opposition figures left prison. Encyklopedia Solidarności records that in August 1980 she was a presidium member and an August Agreement signatory, joined Solidarity from September 1980, and was soon recalled from the MKS presidium by the founding committee of Solidarity at her own workplace. From 2 September 1980 to 5 March 1981 the Gdańsk regional militia's Division IIIA ran a surveillance case against her under the code name "Tabor."
The phase shows a strike built as joint action linking public transport with the shipyard, the ports and the refinery. On 31 August Krzywonos signed the August Agreement as an MKS presidium member, tracing how one tram driver's halt fed into a city-wide workers' organization.