Solidarity (Polish trade union)
Nationwide NSZZ “Solidarność” formed in Gdańsk
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The name that became a global emblem was proposed in the room by Karol Modzelewski, who had spent eight years in communist prisons.
The Ster club room, 17 September 1980
Representatives of Inter-Enterprise Founding Committees and Inter-Enterprise Workers’ Commissions from across Poland met in the Ster club room at the Gdańsk union headquarters on 17 September 1980.
They decided that the local independent unions would register jointly as one nationwide organization — the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity,” NSZZ “Solidarność” — and created national coordinating and founding bodies, with Lech Wałęsa chairing the provisional National Coordinating Commission.
One union, or many easier targets
The choice on the table was tactical: separate regional unions that the authorities could isolate one at a time, or a single national body. Legal adviser Jan Olszewski argued for joint nationwide registration, and the meeting accepted the name proposed by Lower Silesian representative Karol Modzelewski.
A communiqué issued that day reported that more than three million workers in roughly 3,500 workplaces had joined or declared an intention to join the new independent unions.
Not the strike, not the congress
The Gdańsk Shipyard strike had already ended with the agreement of 31 August, which accepted the principle of unions independent of the communist authorities — the date often called Solidarity’s birth. 17 September was the separate decision to make one nationwide union out of it.
It was not the union’s First National Congress either; that met in 1981. Seven days after the Gdańsk meeting, on 24 September, the delegation applied for registration in the Warsaw Provincial Court.
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