Back to the future

Gosh, what a fiery inspiration. The burning image of Solidarnoœć, with a little help from Gary Cooper, sent a message of freedom bounding around the world. The Poles brand-named a revolution. Selling chunks of the Berlin Wall came nowhere near it. Anywhere but Poland, and such a valuable item of intellectual property would have fetched billions and found itself stuck to perfume bottles, designer clothes and credit cards. Here it languishes on tacky crockery, gathering dust in musty union offices. The blazing symbol apparently fetched a pittance in a copyright dispute. Solidarnoœć itself has dropped down a peg or two as well. It is no longer a political movement. It has reversed into history, shorn by events of power and influence, humbled by voters who judged it as well past a natural sell-by date.
Enter the new president of Solidarnoœć, Janusz Œniadek. Is he like the Holy Roman Emperor, grand title, not much in the way of clout, idling away the hours in some draughty schloss? He was late for our interview. He had been springing trade unionists from government prisons, just like the old days. He has just toppled an old warhorse to get the top job. What is he going to do with it?

Here he is on pressing issues for businessmen: "There is no proper restructuring of state industries. They have to lay off hundreds of workers if they want to survive in this competitive environment. Lack of mobility affects those from rural areas who look for jobs in towns. Government job programmes teach skills for which there is no demand in our market. Our tax system should improve and be clearer."
This sounds like the CEO speaking. Let's put him in sharper focus. He's from a traditional union nursery, Gdynia. He was seared by the events along the coast in 1970. He wrote for a samizdat union newspaper during martial law. And he insists he's a trade unionist and not a politician: "It can happen that trade unions are the birthplaces of politicians but never the other way around."
Œniadek looks fresh and crisp, much younger than his 47 years. See him in the street and you'd think he was running a successful small business rather than stepping into the shoes of Wałęsa. It soon becomes clear that pride in achievements of the past isn't enough, that there is something in the Polish character to deal with - the sense of revulsion against the acts of Solidarnoœć, and AWS. Where does that come from?
"There is no doubt that Solidarnoœć was the force which initiated all the privatisation processes, the entering of foreign capital. Largely that is what we are blamed for by society; this is the price we pay. If Poland joins the EU, then in two years, for all the evil that will happen in Poland, we will blame the EU.
"But Poles today are still the same people who shocked the world in 1980. My explanation is that the scale of difficulties Poland faces today causes some people to escape into frustration and negative behaviour. When the economy revives, these same people will behave differently."

He's for the EU. "It is a completion of a process which is natural and obvious." But he's not for Superman's terms. "There is an impression for Miller's government that EU accession is the only idea they have … he has no other idea for the economy and other Polish problems and thinks joining the EU will solve it all."
Œniadek has been saying at intervals that he doesn't want to be a politico, but he offers a sound political definition of what Brussels may mean for the country. "Of course, EU accession will be a great shock. We observe how firm and even ruthless the EU member states realise all their interests ... There are too many fields on which we have complete failure, that is why doubts which are raised by anti-EU groups have unfortunately many reasonable arguments."
The talk turns to what businessmen think about trade unions. The discussion revolves around the leitmotif of the labour code. Œniadek says it is too hard on AWS to claim they did nothing to reform the labour market. From his perspective, businessmen and trade unions are anyway riding in the same wagon. At least they were at the start of the reform process. "After 1989, when the change started, this started to fade. They all went their different ways."
And: "Maybe there was no long-term thinking among the trade unionists, maybe short-term interest or emotions overtook the long-term thinking. But to be honest, we must say that also on the other side there was guilt. The emerging class of businessmen did not have the skills of dialogue, social skills, did not talk to the people."
The union was being misunderstood in its attitude to the development of flexible labour markets.

"We were accused of defending the old code. It is not true. Our position is that the basics should be dealt with first - bureaucracy, the war on corruption, for the more the decision-taking power of the clerks, then the more the corruption.
"We told employers: the government wants to cheat you. We said it will be like smoke and mirrors. The government will try to say they did a lot to fight unemployment, but it will begin and end with the labour code only."
Œniadek talks of "social dumping" and the yawning gap between businessmen who play fair, stumping up the ZUS and sticking to the rigidities of the infamous code, and then go bankrupt for their pains, while on the other side of the fence there are 1.5 million people outside the labour code. "This creates an unlevel playing field: it would never be tolerated in the West."
We are now at the point of understanding what may be driving Œniadek. He is clearly bristling with anger at the injustice of these arrangements. He has gone off into clear blue water, anchoring an influential labour movement close to something which has been called social conservatism but has never yet made an appearance here. This conceivably places him in a crucial position among the competing forces which are reshaping politics.
He insists, again, that Solidarnoœć has evacuated the political pitch. But: "I call to my colleagues, to Kaczyński, Płażyński, to those who come from the circles and groups with whom we find some common language. I say: this is your responsibility for Poland. Build an alternative."

We have tapped into that unique sense of anger and outrage which produced the flaming symbol 20 years ago. Œniadek - and it is easy now to see how this quiet and controlled man thrashed Kraklewski - is brilliantly reinterpreting it as a contemporary theme. "I am aware that currently, with the right side of the political scene Balkanised, there may be - or will be - a situation in which Solidarnoœć will be expected to become politically active. I know we must not go again the same route which would lead us to failure."
And now the punch line: "It is a certain necessity for Solidarnoœć to influence politics in such a way that a conservative-Christian democratic party, in line with the ideological attitude of the majority of Solidarnoœć members, is finally created."
He defers: "I will do for sure everything to support such an event or such situation, but I cannot, as a leader, enter it personally."
Of course. Remember, you read it here first. Œniadek does not want to lead Poland. Ever.