Vol. 72/No. 8      February 25, 2008

The settlement includes establishing a commission to standardize wages in all of Poland’s mines. In early January, 63,000 miners at 16 mines owned by Kompania Weglowa won a 14 percent raise after threatening to strike.

The Budryk miners were demanding a 20 percent raise. Their strike involved an underground protest and mass picketing. Fifty miners’ wives and relatives went to Warsaw January 16 to press Economy Minister Waldemar Pawlak to agree to the miners’ demands.

Poland is Europe’s biggest coal producer, and relies on coal to generate 90 percent of its electricity.

Unemployment in Poland has fallen from 20 percent in 2004 to 11 percent today. Half that decline is due to emigration. “The labor market is tight,” complained Dariusz Filar, a member of the Polish central bank’s monetary policy committee.

While the official inflation rate stands at 2.2 percent and is rising, wages rose an average of 11 percent last year.

Wage raises for public workers haven’t kept pace with those in the private sector. While on the campaign trail last year, Donald Tusk of the Civic Platform party promised, “In the Polish economic miracle, there will be a place for a radical increase in public sector wages.”

Now prime minister, Tusk is trying to cut spending in order to comply with budget deficit requirements for adopting the euro as currency. Teachers, railroad workers, nurses, and other public workers have all placed demands on the new government. Customs workers organized a work-to-rule campaign, taking vacation days and calling in sick en masse, to press demands for pay raises. On January 30 the government sought an agreement to settle the action, which had gridlocked the country’s border. Lorries were backed up in long lines trying to cross the European Union’s eastern border.  
 
 
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