Video: '14th August 1980: Lech Walesa leads Gda?sk shipyard workers on strike'

(Thursday, August 14, 1980, 6:00 a.m. Central European Summer Time) — Thousands of workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, staged a successful strike today to protest the Aug. 7, 1980, dismissal of Anna Walentynowicz, a crane operator and workers’ rights activist, in a job action resulted in creation of Solidarity, the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country.

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The workers were led by electrician Lech Walesa, a shipyard worker who had been dismissed in 1976.

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The strike committee demanded the rehiring of Walentynowicz and Walesa, as well as the according of respect to workers’ rights and other social concerns.