A dissident socialist who linked workers’ self-management to civic solidarity
When the strikes began in 1980, he declared that the stranglehold on workers’ organisation and free information had finally been broken.
Jacek Kuroń was a Polish historian and organiser who tried to separate socialist ideals from the rule of party bureaucracy. His Open Letter to the Party, written with Karol Modzelewski, argued that the bureaucracy dominated workers and proposed workers’ councils and democratic pluralism. A co-founder of the Workers’ Defence Committee in 1976, he connected intellectuals with workers and became a leading adviser to Solidarity in 1980, advocating a programme of self-management. Interned on the first night of martial law in December 1981, he continued to support the underground union and later served as labour and social policy minister during Poland’s post-1989 transition.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1955–1961Co-organiser of the socialist scout movement and commander of the Walterowcy troop
- 1965–1967Co-author of the Open Letter to the Party; political prisoner
- 1968–1971Organiser of the March student protests; political prisoner
- 1976–1977Co-founder of the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR)
- 1980–1981Adviser to Solidarity’s National Commission
- 1981–1984Martial-law internee and defendant in the KOR trial
- 1989–1991Minister of Labour and Social Policy
- 1992–1993Minister of Labour and Social Policy
- 1989–2001Member of the Polish Sejm
Related historical events
Minister of Labour and Social Policy and the social costs of shock therapy (1989–1993)
On 13 September 1989 Kuroń became Minister of Labour and Social Policy in Tadeusz Mazowiecki's cabinet. Some newspapers found his acceptance of the post surprising, calling it difficult because of the implementation of shock therapy and social conflict. His task in the ministry was above all to shield people from the effects of shock therapy. He inherited a disorganised pension system in conditions of high inflation, had to draw heavily on the budget to fund pensions, and introduced a mechanism raising pensions in advance on the basis of projected inflation. When actual inflation came in lower than projected, the result was a budget disaster and some pensions rose above active salaries. He also introduced the unemployment benefit law, known as "kuroniówka"; because benefits went to virtually everyone without work, hundreds of thousands claimed immediately and drained the budget. When railway workers launched a wildcat strike in May 1990, beginning in Słupsk and spreading across the country, he said the government would not meet their demands because doing so would jeopardise the economic reforms and encourage further strikes.
Returning to the ministry on 11 July 1992 in Hanna Suchocka's cabinet, he acted as the main negotiator with the major trade unions during the 1992–93 strikes and proposed a "social pact" containing worker guarantees. The centrepiece of his second term was the Pact on State Enterprise. He launched it as a direct response to the strike wave of summer 1992: workers and administrative staff of state enterprises were to take part in deciding the fate, transformation and reform of their own companies, with a framework for centralised negotiations on wage ceilings. Behind it lay his conviction that reforms should not be carried out "above society", and his aim of blocking a mechanism by which parties "captured" the state to hand lucrative posts to unqualified people. Negotiations among government, unions and employers ran from summer 1992 to March 1993 but were slowed by disputes inside Suchocka's coalition; agreements were signed in February 1993, yet the main proposal fell with the Sejm's dissolution in May 1993 and the government's fall that October. What survived was the Trilateral Commission, an institution of social dialogue among the government, the OPZZ and the management of newly privatised companies.