Solidarity’s aims for work and family rights ‘are not fulfilled’

A Polish archbishop has warned that some demands lodged by his country’s Solidarity union 35 years ago, when it was resisting communism, have still to be met, regarding a just approach to work and family rights.

“Here on the coast, and in union and factory committees throughout Poland, a community of hope crystallised,” said Archbishop Leszek Glodz of Gdansk. “And yet some demands made at the time – improved health service conditions, cheaper social housing, a lower pension age – are still unrealised. They’re an unfinished Solidarity chapter, and  shouldn’t be confined to the museum.”

The archbishop was preaching on Monday in the northern port city’s St Brygida’s Church at a Mass commemorating the union’s August 1980 emergence at the nearby shipyards. He said Solidarity had set out to restore “dignity and meaning to work”, drawing on “Christian social teaching and the Church’s Magisterium”, helped by a “broad mass of priests”. Archbishop Glodz told the congregation, which included President Andrzej Duda: “Your union’s priorities include defending full employment ... and solidarity with families.”