August 31, 1980
The Day Workers Made the State Negotiate
The signing of the Gdańsk Agreement on August 31, 1980
On August 31, 1980, a shipyard electrician and hundreds of thousands of striking workers forced Poland’s communist government to sign a document it had spent weeks trying to avoid. The agreement looked like a compromise, but its real power was that it made independent organization possible—and gave a frightened society a way to act together.
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