Gdansk, the weathered, gritty city on the chilly shores of the Baltic Sea, prides itself on being the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union movement that helped launch the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe. Now, the very free-market mechanisms that thousands of striking Solidarity unionists helped to bring to Poland are threatening the aging state-owned shipyard, whose slowness to wean itself from state subsidies and job guarantees has put it on a collision course with the European Union. During its heyday, when it was known as the Lenin shipyards, Gdansk employed more than 17,000 workers on eight slipways. Today, just 3,000 employees remain.
See "Gdansk shipyard may be victim of Solidarity", Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2007