BY LAILA LARSEN KILDESGAARD and MOGENS HAVNSOE PETERSEN It is 5:15 a.m. when 33-year-old Marek Danowski leaves his family in their 2-room apartment to go to work at the Remontowa shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, to start his 12-hour working day. It is one of Northern Europe’s biggest shipyards, specialised in the repair of tankers. Following a period of uncertainty and crisis for Poland’s many shipyards, Remontowa is getting back on track.
Over the last ten years, the number of employees at the shipyard has gone from 6,000 to just under 2,600. Even if the yard is doing well, there is no indication that it will take on more people. The yard’s transition to become a private sector company in a tough industry means that more and more assignments are solved by companies hired for individual jobs.
THE WORK IS DANGEROUS
In his everyday work, Marek is a mix of a foreman for a team of about 15 and then part of the process himself. The workshop where Marek works renovates pipe systems. The work is difficult — and sometimes dangerous. The pieces of the pipe system which have to be repaired when the ship is at the shipyard are those which are not easy to access. The easier repair jobs are handled by the ship’s own crew while they are sailing or when the ship docks in a port.
“Most of the pipe sections we have to replace are below the floor of the engine room and we cannot weld there because of the fire risk,” says Marek.
And certainly the work is not standardised. Being asked whether there are repetitive assignments, his answer is very brief: “Even two ships built in the same series are not the same.”
You feel an aura of respect around Marek, not because he shouts out. He doesn’t. When Marek speaks, his tone of voice is calm — sometimes with a little smile underneath that moustache. Often he takes the lead and shows the others how to do things, with no other explanation being given than that offered by his skilled hands. In addition, it seems as if most employees are able to operate all the machines. They work with assignments which require different tools at different times.
CHEEKY REMARKS
The fact that Marek is not a “run-of-the-mill” employee can be seen from the fact that he has been a foreman for nine years and is the youngest worker in the history of the yard to have acted as such. Also, it is probably not without reason that during his two-week holiday he has been able to find work in both Singapore and Hamburg.
However, his position does not make him feel distant from his colleagues. The dressing room is full of cheeky remarks from the very morning, as the — slightly old-fashioned — civilian garments are replaced by work clothes that are not too clean. The social feeling of togetherness is seen also during the lunch break, when everyone seems to be talking all the time. The same applies at the hand-out window for tools and spares, where time is also taken for a chat.
What is noteworthy here is that milk is also handed out to the employees, based on a rather outdated idea about health and safety, saying that milk will counteract pollution in the body.
WORKING OVERTIME IS THE RULE
Leisure time is not a word in Marek’s vocabulary. He has to work hard and long hours to be able to live with his wife Elzbieta, her son Marcin, who is 12, and their new-born Kamil, who is just a couple of months old, in their 2-room apartment. Marek has to be at the plant, dressed and ready by 6:00. Officially, working hours end at 2:00 p.m., but overtime work is the rule rather than the exception, so normally he will not be home until 7:00 p.m. After dinner he has a few hours for cuddling the baby and talking to Elzbieta and Marcin. At bed time, 10:00 p.m., there is not much strength left and the next day the whole thing starts all over again — mostly also on Saturdays.
However, there is no doubt that this small apartment and this small family are at the centre of Marek’s heart. Despite being small, the apartment is cosy and shows clearly that here lives a man and his family — a man characterised by pride and dignity.
The smaller of the two rooms is Marcin’s room. The walls are plastered with pictures of football players. There are Lego toys and a computer, where Marcin is just installing the Polish version of Windows 98. The second room in the small apartment is the living room, dining room and bedroom. One wall is dominated by a shelf system with a — turned-on — TV set and a video recorder, plus a miniature stereo system which also emits sound to the room. There are two armchairs and a small coffee table between them. Along the other wall is a couch that folds out to become a bed and in between they have found room for a cradle and a nursing table for the baby.
A SHARED-OWNERSHIP FLAT
The kitchen is not big, but it has everything — fridge, micro and freezer. The bathroom has a tub and everything seems neat and new. There is a reason for that. Marek, together with some workmates, has made this old, worn-down, third floor apartment with sloping walls habitable. Just like a number of other Poles, the family has purchased their dwelling from the state housing association. It is not an owner-occupied flat as such, more like a shared-ownership flat. The rent is 600 zloty (US$152) per month and their share of the ownership has been financed via a loan at the bank. Marek and his wife have chosen a tough repayment scheme, which means that they pay 800 zloty (US$203) per month on the loan, with three more years to go on their five-year loan. The apartment is heated by electricity, which is expensive — 400 zloty (US$101) per month.
PLANNING TO BUY A CITROËN AX
You can see on the properties in the street which staircases have been purchased by the residents and which have not. The staircases which still belong to the state housing association have loose plaster and miserable windows with very little paint left. This must be seen in the light of Marek’s income of 2,700 zloty (US$685) a month including overtime and bonus. When she is not on maternity leave, Elzbieta has a monthly income of 1,400 zloty (US$355) in the window company where she works in the office. During her leave, she receives about half that amount.
From these amounts, 19 per cent tax must be deducted. The employer pays 48 per cent of the amount the employee receives to the government towards social funds and pension. So in order to reach the gross wages, Marek’s wages must be multiplied by 1.5.
When you ask the two of them what their wishes are for the future, their answers are almost identical. Elzbieta says: “I wish Marek would have to work less and if we could get a bigger apartment at some time, that would be wonderful.”
However, the family is planning to purchase a car. Not a Polski Fiat. They are looking at a used Citroën AX. Despite everything, prosperity is beginning to grow in Poland. This can be illustrated by the fact that within the last year the shipyard has had to add two extra personnel parking lots. However, prosperity is very unevenly distributed.
“POLAND HAS BEEN DORMANT”
Today there are 2,600 employees at Remontowa. To this figure must be added approximately 1,000 in the companies to which some of the work has been outsourced, and subdivision into independent companies is widespread. The yard’s internal conveyance system is operated by a subcontractor; the same applies to the canteen and a number of minor production-oriented functions, such as the paintshop. Piotr Soyka, the managing director of the Remontowa shipyard for the last three years, puts it quite bluntly: “Poland has been dormant.”
Piotr Soyka is a charismatic person with dark, strong eyes. His office is characterised by things that look like the old communist system, with pictures and heavy cabinets and a phone system that has so many buttons it looks like the switchboard of a major command centre. Behind the Iron Curtain that is no more, to have many phones was a status symbol.
CHINA IS THE WORST COMPETITOR
However, his way of speaking is far from the old Communist era. Competitiveness and efficiency are words that are used over and over again. He is fully aware that the yard must cultivate its strong sides — including repair of tankers. At the moment, his work focuses on making the turn-around for the yard from state ownership to listing on the stock exchange. That assignment is expected to take six months:
“It is a difficult process, but I am very confident. We have demonstrated good results and in our field we are one of the biggest yards in Europe. However, it is also a difficult process. We need to think differently — which includes working with marketing, because we, too, can feel the competition. Both from other Polish yards and from our worst competitor at the moment — China.”
Piotr Soyka is fully aware that in a modern industrial society, it is necessary to have a good, close cooperation with all employee groups. Consequently, the yard is open to member unionising. However, the company does not interfere into whether the union is the Christian-oriented Solidarnosc, which comes from Gdansk originally, or from the Communist OPZZ union.
MORE WORKERS NEED TO JOIN THE UNION
The secretary of Solidarnosc at the yard, Miroslaw Piorek, says that at the yard there are 1,400 members of Solidarnosc and about 500 members of the Communist trade union OPZZ. Solidarnosc has three full-time officials at the yard — in addition to Miroslaw Piorek, there is a deputy secretary and a clerk.
The fact that there are many members at the yard is not typical of the unionisation percentage in Poland. Only about 20 per cent of those on the labour market are in a union. Among employers, the percentage is even lower. Janusz Sniadek, the vice-president of the national Solidarnosc, sees the low unionisation rate as one of the main problems: “We cannot negotiate decent terms if we cannot get more people to join the union. A number of our political parties are working to liquidate trade union rights; consequently, it is only via a strong trade union movement that we can protect the Polish workers.”
When Solidarnosc — headed by Lech Walesa as leader and subsequent president — acted as a forerunner to the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, it happened hand-in-hand with the Catholic Church. However, today there are no formal ties between the Church and Solidarnosc and Lech Walesa’s role is a thing of the past.
THE ROADS ARE MISERABLE
“We would like to develop Gdansk to become a transport centre in relation to the former East Bloc. In the first years after the turn-around, we were too much oriented towards the West, but Poland — including Gdansk — does have a special location in relation to Russia. Our languages are similar and we can thus become an important hub for contact with the giant Russian market,” says Jerzy Gwizdala, the deputy mayor of the city. One of the goals that Gdansk’s city council is working on is to improve transport connections into Poland and towards the east. Motorways are a key priority, because the roads are pretty miserable, once you get just a little outside the city.
“We must give high priority to infrastructure if we are to attract foreign investment capital. However, we also focus on improving the standard of housing, as our housing blocks are really worn down. Gdansk is a shipyard town by tradition, but we also have many other qualities, and I believe we will also be able to develop tourism in our city,” says Jerzy Gwizdala.
A BRIGHTER FUTURE
Back to Marek. Talking about unionisation and faith, his analysis of the political situation is sharp: “If workers do not join the union, our interests will be neglected. We have to keep a keen eye on the political system if we are to oppose such factors as corruption and avoid seeing the old tyrants replaced by new ones. When I joined Solidarnosc, I did it because I felt the workers had to be an important factor in the process of change.”
He doesn’t mind working hard. He’s been doing it all his life: “But I want to see a purpose. I want to see that I contribute towards giving our children a brighter future than we have had. I would like to learn foreign languages, but that has not been possible. I want the children to have that possibility. Formerly, we were told that everything in the West was terrible and everything in the East was OK.”
That picture of the world has changed, he says. “Our children will be part of an open world.”
Note: The authors are Danish journalists. The text has been published in “The Global World of Metalworkers — Six Portraits from a Changing World” which is obtainable in Danish or English from Dansk Metal, by e-mail on [email protected], or at P.O. Box 308, 1780 Copenhagen, Denmark.

GERMANY: A strike in the two Philips semiconductor plants in Hamburg (2,300 employees) and Boeblingen near Stuttgart (760 employees) is quite likely.
The background for this is an attempt by Philips to escape the collective agreements for the metal industry with a legal trick. Philips announced to make the plants independent companies and to join the employers’ association for the chemical industry, where there are much weaker wages, social benefits, working conditions and longer working time.
The employees of the plants, the works’ councils and IG Metall are fighting against these plans. Since they were announced by the company, 600 additional employees spontaneously joined IG Metall.
The Executive Committee of IG Metall decided that the employees will be called for warning strikes and a strike ballot expected to start on July 1, if the company refuses to negotiate an agreement to resolve the situation.
Philips is already trying to shift production to other plants and to increase the stock for products manufactured in the two plants.
IMF affiliates with membership in Philips are asked to inform their members about the situation in the two German plants and to refuse to take over production which is normally done in these two plants.

GENEVA: A labour leader from Belarus today (June 15) denounced the Lukashenko regime’s “intensified attack on trade unions” and called for continued action by the UN’s International Labour Organisation to keep up pressure on the government. Addressing the more than 500 trade unionists who form the Workers’ Group at this year’s annual ILO International Labour Conference, Viktor Babayed said that a new presidential decree declared any trade union meeting illegal on the eve of the presidential elections and that threats and blackmail against activists have intensified.
Speaking on behalf of the Workers’ Group, Bill Brett, its spokesperson at the Conference, referred to an “extreme situation in Belarus in terms of trade union rights abuses”.
Yesterday, at the initiative of the Workers’ Group, the Conference’s Tripartite Committee on the Application of Standards decided to devote a special paragraph of their report to express particular concern over the situation in Belarus. Delegates denounced the interference in trade union activities by the government, the arrests and dismissals of activists and members and the constant threats on the trade union movement. The Committee report will be formally submitted for adoption by the Conference on its closing day on June 21.
In March of this year, the ILO Governing Body already called on the Belarus government to stop repressing trade unions. A report adopted by the Governing Body accused Belarus of “numerous and varied attacks on trade union rights” and of “regular and systematic interference in trade union activities”.

GENEVA: The ILO’s annual International Labour Conference, presently meeting in Geneva, has denounced “repeated violations of core conventions of the International Labour Organisation by the Indonesian authorities”.
A statement adopted by the Workers’ Group charges that the Indonesian government “has acquiesced in the use of violence against workers” and “has failed to carry out the task of facilitating fair and just resolution of industrial disputes”.
The statement refers specifically to a dispute at the Jakarta Shangri-La Hotel, where 600 trade union members were dismissed by management, which offered to give them back their jobs if they accepted to withdraw from their trade union. Management then locked out the union members for three months and reopened the hotel on March 17 with a non-unionised workforce.
Details of the case were brought to the attention of the Workers’ Group meeting by Maureen Fransesca Elizabeth, who chairs the Shangri-La union’s women’s committee. “On March 17, as we protested against the reopening of the hotel, some 500 soldiers attacked workers, wounding 20 demonstrators, including a pregnant woman who miscarried in the hospital as a result of the beating,” she told workers’ delegates, deploring that the authorities had decided to side with management and participate in the anti-union offensive.

GENEVA:- The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has launched a new initiative aimed at greatly accelerating the removal of millions of children from the most abusive forms of child labour.
The initiative – starting first in Tanzania, Nepal and El Salvador – involves intensified efforts aimed at ending the worst forms of child labour in participating countries, in 10 years or less.
The effort, known as the “Time-Bound Programmes”, is a major step to implement ILO Convention No. 182, adopted unanimously by the International Labour Conference in 1999, to ban the worst forms of child labour.
“It is difficult to imagine that just over a decade ago few voices were raised against child labour… The fight against child labour now commands global attention and solidarity. And today we are targeting the eradication of its worst forms within a decade or less country by country, with international support,” said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia when he called for universal ratification of Convention No.182.
The programme’s approach in the three countries will focus on eliminating the use of children in situations such as scavenging at garbage dumps, portering, mining, domestic work, bonded labour, commercial agriculture, fishing, commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking of children. Several other countries are expected to join the initiative during the next two years.

Companies	Sector	Job Cuts
Lucent Technologies	Network equipment	44,500
Motorola	Mobile phone equipment	30,000
Nortel Networks	Network equipment	30,000
Alcatel	Phones / Network equipment	25,300
Ericsson	Mobile phones / equipment / networks	22,000
Solectron	Contract network equipment	20,700
Fujitsu	Semiconductors / computers	16,400
JDS Uniphase	Optical network equipment	16,000
ABB	Electronic engineering	12,000
Philips	Telephone / mobile phone	11,500
Cisco Systems	Network equipment	8,500
Siemens	Phones / mobile phones / networking equipment	7,500
Marconi	Network equipment	7,000
ADC	Broadband equipment	7,000
WorldCom Group	Alternative telecom operator	6,800
Agere Systems	Network components	6,000
British Telecommunications	Telecoms operator	6,000
Corning	Fibre-optic components	5,900
Cable and Wireless	Network operator	5,500
NTL	Cable operator	5,000
Matsushita Electric	Electrical / Electronics	5,000
Infineon	Semiconductors	5,000
3Com	Networking components	4,200
NEC	Electronic devices / IT-hardware	4,000
Celestica	Contract network equipment maker	2,900
Cap Gemini	IT Consultant	2,700
Molex	Interconnection equipment	2,500
Epcos	Mobile phone components	2,200
Conexant Systems	Networking components	2,075
Winstar	Alternative telecoms operator	2,000
Level 3 Communications	Broadband network operator	1,400
ECI Telecom	Network equipment	1,400
Amazon.com	Online retailer	1,300
Covad Communications	Broadband network operator	1,200
Nokia	Mobile phone equipment	1,000
Tellabs	Networking components	1,000
Total of listed companies:	333,475
Sources: Financial Times July 27, 2001, and later; “Der Spiegel”, No. 31, 2001 and other Newspapers / Status: August 20, 2001
© Robert Steiert (2001)

GENEVA: The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has called on the ILO’s International Labour Conference to reject the credentials of the worker delegate from Yugoslavia. The delegation is taking part in the ILO’s annual conference, presently meeting in Geneva.
In a letter addressed to the ILO director general, Juan Somavia, the ICFTU charges that the Yugoslav government “acted in breach of its obligations” by failing to include the most representative worker organisation as part of its tripartite delegation to Geneva. According to the ILO rules, delegations to the conference should include delegates from the country’s most representative employer and worker organisations.
The government-appointed worker delegate comes from Yugoslavia’s smallest trade union, which is said to be close to the Yugoslav labour minister, Dragan Milovanovic. Milovanovic is actually a former president of this trade union. Yugoslavia’s largest trade union organisation, the 600,000-member Nezavisnost, has not been consulted in the forming of the delegation, which also fails to include representatives from Montenegro’s Confederation of Independent Trade Unions.
Nezavisnost president, Branislav Canak, who is participating in the ILO Conference as part of the ICFTU delegation, told the hundreds of union leaders who form the Workers’ Group at the conference that, since Yugoslavia rejoined the ILO in November last year, most of the anti-union regulations inherited from the Milosevic regime have been kept in place, despite recommendations and advice from the UN labour body.
Nezavisnost has been a staunch opponent to the Milosevic rule, and Branislav Canak has been denouncing attacks on independent trade unions at each International Labour Conference since 1994, always as part of the ICFTU delegation.
Source: ICFTU Online

KOREA, Rep: Some 48,000 workers at 120 factories in the chemical, steel and other industries went on strike on June 12, according to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ (KCTU). The strike has been expected to involve 200 unions, including those of the two national air carriers and 18 major hospitals. A KCTU official says that the unions of 14 hospitals will strike on June 13 and four others will join the following day.
President Kim Dae-jung is reported to have urged his ministers to increase their efforts to end growing labour unrest in the country. The government has appealed to unions to call off the strike, fearing that it will deter foreign investors at a time when the economy is showing signs of recovery. Members of the government have said that they would protect legal and peaceful gatherings but would crack down harshly against illegal and violent demonstrations.
The KCTU issued a statement saying that if the government used riot police to deal with labour-management relations there would be full-scale confrontations and called on the government not to intervene.
The trades unions are protesting against the government’s economic reforms, which have led to company restructuring and widespread redundancies.

GREAT BRITAIN: According to an interview with the Financial Times, Ken Jackson, general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU), has called for “no-strike” deals with binding arbitration as part of the modernisation of the public services in the UK.
“Just as in manufacturing, we need to see greater competition and higher productivity in the public services,” Ken Jackson said the day before the AEEU biennial conference began in Blackpool.
“There must be phased-in public investment based on tangible results. We must play our part because the government cannot do it on its own. Unions must accept their responsibilities. Their members are consumers as well as producers.”
Ken Jackson, who is according to the FT “Tony Blair’s favourite union leader,” wants the spread of best practices in companies with a modern attitude to technological change. “I find no hostility among our members for this agenda,” he added. We are more pro-active and not defensive. Unions have a good product, but they market it badly.”

SOUTAFRICA: The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) says in a press release that the Automobile Manufacturers Employers’ Organisation (AMEO) has “tabled a miserable 6.5 per cent wage offer across the board.” The employer organisation rejected all other Numsa demands.
The union is “highly angry and disappointed that employers failed to come closer to the 15 per cent wage demand but rather want to erode all workers’ rights.”
According to Numsa, the employers are moving away from established procedures in addressing issues and disagreements but want to be confrontational. The employers are proposing a suspension to the Work Security Fund and an end to general meetings in car manufacturing plants.
Earlier this year, the general secretary of Numsa, Silumko Nondwangu, warned employers that the union’s struggle for wage increases would be stronger than in any other previous year.
The parties are to meet again in July.