Komunikat NSZZ Solidarność KWB Bełchatów

Statement of the Solidarity Union in Brown Coal Mine Bełchatów The statement concerns the threats to the functioning of the company resulting from the government restructuring program of the Polish power industry.

The Birth of Leaders: Regional Chairmen of the Solidarity Movement

The article analyzes the biographies of the regional leaders of the Solidarity union and examines the process by which activists were recruited into the social movement and subsequently rose through its ranks. Though there exists an abundant body of research on Solidarity, the recruitment process for the trade union’s middle management has never been analyzed. Such an examination of the regional leadership is important given the significant diversity that existed in the selection process. Activists were selected in regions where strikes occurred (Gdańsk and Wałęsa) and in ones where there were no strikes. This article attempts to identify these regional leaders and their role in Solidarity. It poses questions about the social movement’s center of power. Did the regional leadership represent a grassroots social movement, or were they merely carrying out orders from the center? The subject of this analysis is a group of thirty-nine chairmen comprising the regional leadership of Solidarity. The article employs classical historical analysis methods combined with elicited sources (interviews conducted with selected leaders). It presents a prosopographical analysis based on statistical, historical, and sociological data. The questions posed in the article involve such issues as the Solidarity recruitment process, the social backgrounds of the leaders, their individual personality traits and biographical features, and the goals and motivations that led them to join the movement. The analysis reveals the qualities shared by the majority of the regional leadership of Solidarity.

Migrações internacionais contemporâneas e crise de refugiados no arco noroeste do Brasil: o caso do acolhimento de venezuelanos pelo estado de Roraima (2018–2019) /Contemporary international migration and refugee crisis in the northwestern arch of Brazil

Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar o fluxo de migrações internacionais, no contexto da crise de refugiados venezuelanos no arco noroeste do Brasil, no estado de Roraima. Mais do que a simples entrada de venezuelanos, a investigação analisa a capacidade do Brasil em acolher os pedidos de asilo que recebeu nos anos de 2018 e 2019, bem como suas políticas e ações desenvolvidas. Diante desta conjuntura, o Estado brasileiro adotou medidas que demandaram solidariedade, união e trabalho interagências estatais e não estatais, nas ações de controle das migrações, realocação dos que pediram asilo, e reinstalação de pessoas necessitadas. Como uma operação de guerra, foi montada uma estrutura logística militar para acolher os venezuelanos, em território brasileiro. This article aims to analyze the international migration flux in the context of the Venezuelan refugee crisis in the northwestern arch of Brazil in the state of Roraima. Beyond the Venezuelan entry, this work also analyses the Brazilian capacity to admit the asylum requests that the country received between the years of 2018 and 2019, as well as the policies and actions in this matter. In this scenario, the Brazilian state adopted some measures that demanded solidarity, union, and the inter-state and non-estate work in the actions that deals with migration control, reallocation of those who required for asylum, and the resettlement of people in need. As a war operation, a military logistic was set up to welcome the Venezuelan in Brazilian´s territory.

‘We just get a bit set in our ways’: renewing democracy and solidarity in UK trade unions

In a broader context of austerity, sustained financial pressures and policies of restructuring and outsourcing have steadily eroded traditional features of UK public sector employment such as job security, fair reward and collective representation through trade unions. This article examines how a UK trade union representing local government workers attempted to respond more effectively to radical restructuring plans. By engaging in a process of democratic experimentation, full-time officials from above and activists from below sought to challenge the existing ‘insider’ relationship between branch officers and management, which was seen as ineffective in responding to a severe disruption in the regulation of local government employment. Drawing on participatory ethnographic research, the findings show the importance of leadership in the processes towards union renewal and the tensions and struggles underlying democracy and solidarity. Union renewal is presented here as a dialectical process and set of responses involving both strategic direction from above and membership pressure and activism from below.

Protest

Successful nonviolent protests are the celebrated theaters of musical politics; the same is true for the month of protests that brought about the legalization of the Solidarity Union, the first independent trade union in the Eastern bloc. This chapter takes the reader into the important role that sound media played both in coordinating efforts on the ground and in narrating the August 1980 strikes’ power to a broader public in Poland and abroad. Written and recorded accounts of the protest scenes show sound’s coordinating power and music’s entertainment value for this occupational strike. The charismatic workers’ representative Lech Wałęsa sang at the negotiating table, bringing music to the political stage. The chapter also critiques romantic notions of music and protest to dwell on questions of authorship and agency by tracing the rise of the opposition’s protest anthem, “Walls” (1978), by singer-songwriter Jacek Kaczmarski.