Workers defiant as bailouts mount

With their jobs at risk in a protracted dispute with Brussels over state aid, workers in the union that played a crucial role in the struggle for democracy feel angry and betrayed by their own government and the EU.

“The EU says it must protect European jobs – so why does it want us to close and to order ships from Asia?” said Roman Galezewski, head of the Solidarity branch at the sprawling Gdansk shipyard.

“There is a real will to fight here now… Shipyard workers here fought against tanks in the 1970s with their bare hands. You can’t mess with people like this.”

The workers now number about 3,000, down from 12,000 in Solidarity’s heyday in the 1980s, and represent a fraction of the city’s workforce. But their symbolic force is considerable.

Lech Walesa, the shipyard electrician who led Solidarity to victory in 1989 and became Poland’s first post-communist president in 1990, recently appealed to the EU to save the Gdansk shipyard, saying it was part of Europe’s heritage.

“Our people are furious with Brussels for subsidising some industries while forbidding aid to us,” said Galezewski.

Strife has long dogged Poland’s shipyards. The state aid that triggered the EU probes was the result of inefficient work practices at the yards, which have not made a profit on a single ship since 2004.

ISD Polska, a unit of Ukrainian group Donbass, bought a majority stake in the Gdansk shipyard in 2007, saving it from bankruptcy, but is now awaiting a European Commission ruling on whether more than €157m of aid paid to the yard over many years was illegal and must be repaid. Solidarity says the aid totalled only €6.7m.

Repaying aid
The Commission has already ordered the state-owned shipyards of nearby Gdynia and of Szczecin to repay billions of euros of aid. Those yards are now in the process of being sold to another investor, United International Trust.

Polish officials have suggested United International Trust represents a Gulf-based buyer, but neither the Trust nor ISD were available for comment on their plans for the Polish yards.

Politically, the timing is awkward. Poland’s once-booming economy is slowing fast and Poles are also keenly aware that western European governments have been spending billions of euros of taxpayers’ money to support banks and carmakers as the Commission stands by.

Warsaw has offered one-off pay cheques for shipyard workers who lose their jobs in the restructuring of firms and has also offered retraining to some. Solidarity, opposing any job losses, says employers should instead be recruiting more people to safeguard the future of shipbuilding. Galezewski was also dismissive of plans to retrain workers for an increasingly service-oriented economy.

“Which sector is now able to employ more people in such a crisis?” he said. “We will just spend money on creating new jobless. An unemployed welder or unemployed barber, it is the same thing.”