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response and acted to remove Gomulka from office. Gierek immediately repudiated Gomulka's thesis of a "counterrevolution," called the events a justified protest movement of the working class, and undertook to placate the rebellious workers with immediate material concessions and the promise of changes in the economic and social policies pursued by his predecessor.
b. Labor and the new managers
The first step taken by the new government was to freeze retail prices for 2 years, to "suspend" the controversial wage freeze, and to lift all employment restrictions. A week later the government announced a combination of measures designed to compensate low-paid workers and low-income families for the December increase in the cost of living. The statutory minimum wage was increased from 850 zlotys to 1,000 zlotys a month, and workers earning less than 2,000 zlotys were to receive raises ranging from 30 to 80 zlotys a month, retroactive to 1 December 1970. Family allowances were raised for families having two or more children and a net per capital income not exceeding 1,000 zlotys a month. Minimum pensions and disability payments were raised by 60 zlotys a month. According to the official announcement, the wage and pension increases affected 5.2 million people, and the increased family allowances benefited 4.7 million children.
The essential defect of these initial measures was that they offered nothing to skilled industrial workers who already had a job and earned more than 2,000 zlotys a month. (By February 1971 the average monthly wage of industrial workers was 2,537 zlotys. Most important perhaps, the shipyard workers who sparked the riots earned between 2,800 and 3,400 zlotys.) Although the promised 2-year price freeze and possible future wage increases would ultimately benefit them, the workers sought immediate relief from the December 1970 increase in their cost of living. As a result, the industrial workers continued to press for either across-the-board wage increases or recession of the December price increases, and a new wave of protest strikes swept against Poland. A 3-day general strike occurred in Szczecin on 22-24 January 1971, and on 12 February a general strike was launched in Lodz, a major textile center. The government responded with pleas for restraint and cooperation and with promises to improve the working people's standard of living. These promises, however, failed to budge the workers and the regime was forced to yield. On 15 February it was announced that Soviet credit obtained "during the last few days" permitted a total nullification of the December 1970 price increases.
The simultaneous announcement of the price rollback and of the Soviet credit which had made it possible occurred while the Lodz strike was still underway, and there are reasons for believing that the firm stand of the Lodz workers may have had a decisive influence on the decisions reached in both Warsaw and Moscow. Lodz has occupied a special place in the fighting tradition of the working-class movement not only in Poland but in Russia (to which Lodz belonged until 1918). A general strike in Lodz (bloodily suppressed by Tsarist troops) was a highlight of the 1905 Russian revolution.
The concessions that the Gierek regime made to labor were not only expedient steps to quell popular discontent, but were also symptomatic of the new leadership's determination to develop a pattern of social and economic development based on a new relationship of trust between the working class and the new government. The new socioeconomic philosophy rested on the precept that development of the national economy and the material welfare of the people are not mutually exclusive, and that one rests upon the other. In the words of a ranking member of the new party leadership in November 1971:
- ...increased consumption is an important and necessary factor in the process of economic growth, a factor which stimulates production and technological progress, improves organization, and results in greater labor productivity.
This pragmatic, consumer-oriented approach reflected the long-held personal convictions of the new party leader, Edward Gierek, whose concern for the material well-being of workers as a stimulant to economic performance was well-known. Following his early years as a miner and a trade union organizer in the Communist movement in France and Belgium, Gierek's outlook was further developed during his efficient stewardship from 1957 to 1970 as party chief of Katowice, Poland's key industrial province, where he demonstrated his belief that a just reward for good work and close touch with the needs of labor generates a self-sustaining cycle of economic development. In December 1970, the fortuitous circumstances that brought Gierek into power also made his deeply held socioeconomic views acceptable both to the Polish and Soviet parties.
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