Krzaklewski comes under heavy fire on eve of Solidarity Congress

On Thursday the National Congress of the Solidarity trade union will begin, during which a new governing board is to be elected and important issues concerning the future of the union will be discussed. Jozef Niemiec and Kazimierz Grajcarek are the candidates running alongside incumbent Marian Krzaklewski to be the union leader. There were two further candidates in the field, but they decided to pull out and switch their support to Niemiec and Grajcarek. One of the ex-candidates, Bogdan Klepas, said "The unionists need hope. Marian Krzaklewski is not giving us this hope. Marian has a lot of merits, but when elected, he will make everyone say that nothing can be done. People associate him negatively. When you lose a game, you change the coach and the team leader". Solidarity, once millions strong barely has 800,000 members and is still daily losing members. Delegates hopes to discuss ways to reinvigorate the union to attract new members and strengthen links to the rank and file as many feel that the union bureaucracy has lost touch with the daily reality of ordinary members. (Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 10) M.T.