Canada/ World

A second look at Walesa’s Solidarnosc

The following is the text of a speech deli-
vered by Jeff rose, president of the Canadian
Union of Public Employees to the union's
national executive committee last November,
dealing with the U.S.-Canada tour of
Poland's Lech Walesa. Later transcribed and
distributed for circulation within the union, it
is reproduced here with permission from
GUPE.

By JEFF ROSE

Here are my impressions of Lech Walesa,
with whom I and about 18 other labour
leaders met in private session last Sunday
for breakfast. Then he addressed a labour
banquet which I also attended on Sunday
evening.

This is a labour
leader who, as you
know, is a Nobel
Prize winner and
quite a personage in
his own right. A
very strong-willed
individual. Now
Solidarity has been
handed the respon-
sibility of bringing
the Polish economy
out of the stagna-
tion in which central planning left it.

They have decided, as a strategy, to try to
get western investment to bring them out of
stagnation. And so Walesa, who is the best
known of the leaders in Poland, has been
sent to North America — Canada first,
and then Washington — to try to drum up
investment.

The message he gave all of us as labour
leaders, at the breakfast and at the banquet,
was: “Put your money into Poland.” You
may wonder why he said that to us. None of
us has any money! The reason is that he was
not here to meet with labour.

He was here to havea dialogue with
government and with industry in the hope
that he can get businessmen to invest in his
country, and also get some loan guarantees
from the Canadian and American govern-
ments.

In short, we met with someone who is a
senior labour leader on the international
stage, but who didn’t talk about labour at
all. Yet we Canadians were all anxious to
talk about the future for workers in Poland
now that the Stalinist legacy has been aban-
doned. What we were told was: ““Come to
Poland as tourists and bring cash.” So the
whole affair was a little difficult.

We hada chance at the breakfast to ask a
few questions. Five questions were permit-
ted, and I had one. I asked about public and
social services in Poland. I said that we
realize Solidarity doesn’t have all the
answers, and that Poland is a society in
transition.

We acknowledge they’ve made enor-
mous strides at the political level as they
move toward a pluralistic democracy. And
we realize that economically they have no
particular model in mind. (What Walesa
talked about constantly was “the doors are
open to business.” In fact, he had a very
pointed way of putting it. “The doors are
more than open. We’ve taken the doors off
the hinges,” he said.

Certainly the world today is talking
about the politics of overthrowing Stali-
nism, and that’s exactly what they’ve done
politically. Now, however, they’ve got to
deal with the economic challenge. So the
doors are open for Western capital to come
in and take over the Polish infrastructure.

“Come and manage it for us. You'll
make a very good profit. Come give us your
expertise, give us your technology, give us
your capital. We will work for you.”’ Essen-
tially, what this labour leader was saying is:
““We’ve got workers whom you can exploit,
whom you can pay cheap. Come and make
a killing.”

In any event, my question had to do with
public and social services. To continue,
Poland is in transition politically, and we in

ROSE

Canada understand that. They’re in transi-
tion economically, even though the vision is
less clear. My question went on to ask if he
had done any thinking in that context about
the future of Polish and public services.

For all their faults, the command econ-
omy and the command society provided
universal access to certain social and public
services (at least on paper). The people
didn’t have to pay cash for education or for
health care, for example.

What happens now, I asked, as Poland
moves toward a pluralistic model politi-
cally, and an uncertain model, economi-
cally, to the public and social services that
people have come to rely upon?

His answer was: “We intend to bring
prosperity so that the people can have cash
to make choices. That’s what we’re aiming
at. We have no set idea about how public
services will be provided. But the key point
for us is that the system will not be monopo-
listic.

“Once people have money in their
pockets they can decide what goods they
want to buy and what services they want to
buy. Anyway, universal access under the
old regime was a myth,” he said.

I think the unionists around the table
were staggered by that answer, as I was.
Essentially, what he meant was that if the
Humana Corporation is willing to go into
Poland and run all the hospitals, great.

Then when people get prosperous as a
result of working for low wages for Ameri-
can capital, they can spend it on education,
or on health care, or on holidays, or they
can do whatever they want with it.

So Walesa’s vision is to move Poland
toward an unlimited form of market econ-
omy. (He did not seem to knowa great deal
about its pitfalls.) I’m not reading between
the lines of what Walesa said. I’m telling
you what he said. Poland. is not moving
toward a social democratic model, but
instead toward an open free market econ-
omy.

I predict that the expectations of the Pol-
ish people will be very hard to reconcile with
that vision. True, these people went through
a stage where politically they showed more
courage every day than we’re called upon to
show in a lifetime. You remember that if
they had screwed up ata particular moment
a few years ago, Brezhnev would have sent
in the tanks. This was for real.

They managed, by keeping their eye on
the ball, to find their way through the politi-
cal forest, and to come out the other side
without being crushed (although Solidarity
was abolished and it lost all its assets). In the
end, the Stalinist legacy was abandoned.
But economically, I think they're naive.

An open market economy means no
more guaranteed access to public services.
Walesa seems to accept this, emphasizing
instead that an open market economy
means the end of monopoly and the begin-
ning of a new regime of consumer choice.

But consumer choice, to be meaningful,
requires consumer prosperity. So they were
here seeking capital, support from govern-

‘ments for loans, and also a little bit of a

break on the interest they have to pay on
their $35-billion debt to the West. Frankly,
it was a little sad to see one of the great trade
union leaders of our times on his knees with
his hands out to Washington.

I will now make one other observation,
which is somewhat contradictory to what
I've been telling you so far. I’ve said so far
that I don’t think they’ve thought through
the consequences of the open market model
they are pursuing. On the other hand, they
may know very well.

They may have sat down in a very hard-
nosed way and decided that if they do not
deliver a certain amount of economic rene-
wal soon, then the political reforms they
have achieved so far are doomed. And the
only thing they may think they can do to
kick-start the economy is to go to the West
and sell their labour.

If that is what they have decided, then
that is what Walesa was doing here in a very
disciplined way. He may not have all this in
sight; he may have all this in sight. I will
never know; none of us will ever know. But
if they do have all this in sight, they’re cer-
tainly a disciplined group of people.

It can’t be easy, but they may not feel,
with a $35-billion debt, that they’ve got any
alternative. Some of the consequences will
be regrettable, but they may feel they’ve got
no choice.

Ironically, Western governments are
probably not going to guarantee loans of
any significant magnitude, and Western
capital is probably not going to invest very
heavily in Poland, because of the instability
of the situation.

disciplined group of people, just as he is
personally. (He fasts in the morning, and
has mass every single morning.) And they
were disciplined tactically and strategically
in dealing with the Russians.

Indeed the record will show that as a
working class movement they were all
extremely disciplined. Or they would have
been slaughtered. Hence, they may have
brought some of that experience of group
and personal discipline to what he was
doing in North America, as unpalatable as
it may be to them.

Julie Davis asked Walesa a question
about equality for women and he answered
something like: “No, no. I’m going to say
something now that will probably not find
very much favour with you, Madam. But

LECH WALESA ADDRESSING U.S. CONGRESS ... pitching his appeal more to
corporate investors than to the labour movement.

It's a chicken and egg problem. The
Solidarity people undoubtedly believe the
situation will become more unstable unless
they can kick-start the economy. But I think
Western businessmen, who are very reluc-
tant to invest in unstable situations, will
probably not do so here because of the
potential for problems when the expecta-
tions of the people are not met and (if the
IMF has its way) when the whole Polish
economy is downsized.

(The economy will have to be tightened
so that some of the surplus that is created by
the labour force can be creamed off for the
West, rather than distributed to Polish con-
sumers, and so payments can be made on
the debt.)

In any event, if Walesa sees all this
clearly, then he and his colleagues are a very

no, no. [ cannot see it. I cannot envision
women on tractors. Women are not for
tractors, they’re for flowers. You may feel
differently, but I’m telling you the way I
feel?

He was very personable and undogmatic.
What he was driving at was that the burden
of work should be lifted from women as
much as possible. That’s his vision. Medie-
val and sexist. His Canadian audience was
dumbfounded.

Poland has only just emerged from four
decades of acommand economy. So it’s not
surprising the leaders see everything in
terms of burying the monopoly and making
choices in their lives. But they may not fully
understand the pitfalls of this. And they’re
miles away from women’s equality.

Pacific Tribune, March 26, 1990 « 7