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In an effort to absorb the anticipated high annual increment to the labor force, the authorities reduced taxes on private establishments, and provided favorable loans for craftsmen. Since 1970 the Gierek regime's commitment to consumer welfare, as well as the need to absorb large new increments into the labor force, has resulted in an expansion of such sectors as services, and the growth of private or semi-private (state franchise) enterprises—most noticeably in catering and automobile service stations.
Because a large proportion of the Polish nonagricultural labor force, particularly in industry, was recruited in the countryside, types and degrees of skills are generally below the standards of an industrialized Western country. To meet its needs for skilled labor, the government has appropriated sizable funds for general and vocational education.
The educational qualifications of workers in the socialist sector have improved considerably since 1958 (Figure 20). The proportion of the work force with secondary school or university degrees in 1968 was highest in education (18%), public administration (18%), and health and welfare (13%). Among workers in agriculture and forestry, over 30% had not completed primary school. Approximately 49% of the workers in industry had finished at least 7 years of primary education and 26% had received additional vocational training, while less than 8% were graduates of academic high schools or universities. This is characteristic of Poland's urban labor force, for the 8-year compulsory schooling law is strictly enforced in the cities and vocational training accounts for much of the worker's background.
FIGURE 20. Educational level of employees in the socialist sector of the economy (U/OU) (chart/graph)
The geographic distribution of the nonagricultural labor force is uneven. The highly urbanized Silesian basin, and especially the province of Katowice, constitutes the industrial heartland of the country. With barely 3% of the total land area, Katowice accounts for approximately 16% of the nonagricultural labor force and 21% of the industrial labor force. Other high concentrations of nonagricultural employment surround the cities of Warsaw, Lodz, Wroclaw (formerly Breslau), Krakow, Poznan, and increasingly the shipping and shipbuilding centers along the Baltic coast—Gdansk, Gdynia, and Szczecin (formerly Stettin). Lowest concentrations are found in the predominantly agricultural provinces bordering the U.S.S.R.—Bialystok, Lublin, and Rzeszow.
2. Labor as catalyst to change
When party leader Edward Gierek took over the leadership of the country from his predecessor, Wladyslaw Gomulka, on 20 December 1970, it was a week of the gravest political crisis in the history of postwar Poland. Although the workers' demonstrations and riots which toppled Gomulka were ignited by the folly of the former regime in raising the prices of food and other staples by some 15% to 20% just before the Christmas season, the workers were further embittered by the prevailing view that once again they were to bear the brunt of the economic and social inequities inherited from the past. The new leadership subsequently acknowledged in assessing the December events that:
- the protests took such violent form as a result of social discontent which had been accumulating for a long time; it was caused by many factors, and particularly by the worsening economic situation of the country, serious neglect in social policy, the stagnation of real wages, shortages of supplies, and the rising cost of living ... The December events have shown that any disruption of the bone between the party and the working class ... can cause a serious political upheaval in our country.
Despite the Gierek regime's correct insight into and understanding of the causes of the December 1970 explosion, the initial months of his role were spent in putting out the fires of discontent and taking stopgap measures to alleviate the most evident worker grievances. By early 1973 the leadership had taken many new steps to catalogue the errors of the past and to institute new policies earning the respect of the working class as well as of society as a whole, but the
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