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The long-range improvements that the Gierek regime sought in its relations with labor began with a revision of the 1971-75 economic plan in the light of new priorities. The revised plan, presented in mid-1971, called for a 38% increase in personal consumption over the plan period, and a rise of 18% in real wages, i.e., an average annual growth of 3.4%—twice the rate of the 1961-70 decade. Housing construction targets were increased by 25%. Finally, the regime pledged itself to find 1.8 million new jobs in the 1971-75 period. This figure represents the net increase in the number of jobs necessary to absorb the total contingent of some 3.5 million workers entering the labor market during this period.
In addition, the regime is committed to create more jobs for women and youth, and to take full advantage of the qualifications of workers already on the hob. It has also undertaken a gradual but thorough revision of the wage and salary system basically designed to make take-home pay less dependent on bonuses. Proposals put forward also call for a reduction of wage disproportions among different classes of workers but without eliminating monetary incentives; indeed, individual wage scales would be correlated with productivity, quality of work, responsibility, qualifications, and seniority.
The peasantry, who would have to provide the food that the new regime had promised the workers, was not neglected. The new deal for Poland's private farmers was announced in mid-April 1971 in the form of an eight-point agricultural program. The main features of this new agrarian policy included: abolition, as of January 1972, of all compulsory deliveries; improved procedures and increased prices for the purchase of agricultural products by the state; the grant of property titles to "more than a million private farmers"; changes in existing land taxes to compensate the state for the end of compulsory deliveries, but also to facilitate expansion of private holdings by purchase of state land; and introduction of a comprehensive free health service for private farmers and their families. These measures gave the individual peasants a sense of security, economic respectability, and social usefulness that had not existed under Gomulka. In addressing the concrete issue of increasing the output of food, the new leadership had in effect further consolidated private ownership in the countryside, and thus had exhibited a willingness to subordinate ideological to pragmatic considerations.
The favorable response of the peasantry to these measures, in addition to heavy imports of food, permit the regime to improve living standards. There were no persistent shortages of food or consumer goods in 1971, although sporadic nonavailability of certain items in select parts of the country—blamed on distribution shortcomings—continued to cause local irritation.
More important in many ways than these tangible changes, however, is the regime's measured success in convincing labor, especially young workers, that communication between the people at the working level and the country's rulers has been restored and that they will continue to have a voice and a stake in national development. While most of the former institutional forms have been retained, Gierek's moves to streamline and energize the bureaucracy when possible, and sidestep it when not, appear to have convinced the majority of the initially skeptical and militant workers to participate in the "process of national renovation" that is the motto of the Gierek regime.
3. Trade unions and labor relations
In a major sense, labor relations and their institutional basis have been the most important and most sensitive aspects of the domestic policies of the Gierek regime since its assumption of power after the workers' revolt in December 1970. As a result of its success in overthrowing the former Gomulka regime, labor has remained acutely aware of its political clout. Gierek's conciliatory moves in raising wages, improving living standards, and promising a greater role for labor in shaping economic and social policy reflect the new government's awareness of its dependence on the good will of the working class.
Yet, the new regime has evidently no intention of meeting the demands for independent trade unions that were voiced by the striking workers in December 1970, and organizationally there has been virtually no change in the trade union structure since then. In 1970 there were 23 trade unions organized according to sector of economic activity, all under the central direction of a parent organization, the Central Council of Trade Unions (CRZZ). Regionally, the CRZZ supervises the work of the individual trade unions by administrative division down to the district (county) level, as well as the activities of trade councils or cells in all major enterprises and places of employment. Total trade union membership in December 1970 was 10,101,700 members. Manual workers represented about 43% and women about 40% of the total. The following tabulation lists Polish
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
