Public sector crisis: State of unrest
The spotlight last week was on striking customs officials, who paralyzed road freight traffic on both sides of the country's eastern border checkpoints. Queues at the border were estimated to stretch some 20 to 50 km, with drivers waiting three to four days to cross.
The latest strike
The striking customs officers were demanding a pay rise of zł.1,500 a month, while the government's counter-offer stood at zł.500. President Tusk flew out to the border on Monday, but by Wednesday negotiations had collapsed, with each side blaming the other, as they had from the beginning. However, as WBJ went to press, a deal had been reached, ending the strike, and guaranteeing a zł.500 raise and job security.
"Both sides [were] responsible for the crisis. On the one hand, the customs officers should not be allowed strike; on the other, the government should have reacted immediately," Tadeusz Wilk, director of the transportation department at the Association of International Road Transport Carriers (ZMPD), told WBJ.
Logistics losses
The total cost to business may not be known for some time, but losses among logistics firms could ruin some entrepreneurs. "The strike has been very harmful for the [road freight] branch ... Many of these firms are small, family-run businesses and the profit margins in the sector are not very high," ZDPM's Wilk said.
"Some of the carriers are in danger of losing their contracts. Regardless of the circumstances, their clients will accuse them of being unreliable," he added.
While Poland's government was in damage-control mode, trying to assuage the customs officers, representatives of transport firms from both Ukraine and Belarus announced their intentions to submit damage claims to the European Union. The situation is unlikely to strengthen European confidence in Poland as a frontier state, especially given the amount of preparation necessary for the Euro 2012 soccer championships, which it will co-host with Ukraine.
The broader crisis
The agitation at the eastern border drew a lot of attention last week, but it represented only one facet of a broader crisis in the public sector. Miners, doctors and nurses, teachers, railway workers and judges have all threatened to hold or have already staged strikes recently.
Marek Migalski, a political scientist at the University of Silesia in Katowice, gave four reasons for the government's current difficulties. "First of all, there were election promises made to all social groups," he said. Second, "Civic Platform does not have ties to a labor union, while Law and Justice has Solidarność and the Democratic Left Alliance has OPZZ (the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions) and ZNP (the Polish Teachers' Union)."
A third factor, he added, "is the economic growth that we keep hearing about - these groups would like to participate in it." Finally, Migalski said that, "PO is much more dependent on polls than PiS, for example. Tusk is counting on [winning] the presidency [in 2010] and the polls do matter for him. Still he does not give into demands, but puts things off until tomorrow. Thus he appears softer on the unions [than his predecessors]."
