Solidarity leader Lech Walesa risked his reputation with supporters by halting a series of strikes in exchange for a vague government promise to discuss legalizing his banned union movement and allowing union pluralism. But the stakes in the upcoming talks also are high for the government. After strikes this spring and summer, Poland appears doomed to recurring episodes of costly labor unrest unless the government can find a way to build social confidence, or at least patience, for austerity measures to fix the ailing economy. Church mediator Jacek Ambroziak said Saturday the ``roundtable'' talks on broad social and political issues could begin very soon. After a preliminary meeting with authorities Wednesday, Walesa won a promise that Solidarity would be on the agenda. But many pro-Solidarity workers, distrustful of government promises, feared Walesa agreed too easily to end the strikes without a firm agreement from authorities to legalize Solidarity or at least some form of independent unions. Solidarity, the only independent union federation in the Soviet bloc, was crushed with martial law in 1981 and banned the following year. Walesa was unsmiling when asked about opposition among workers to ending the strikes. The question was put shortly after a tense late-night meeting Wednesday with strikers in Gdansk. ``I have always trusted my instincts,'' he said emphatically. ``And my instincts tell me I am right.'' Walesa spent the next two days going to shipyards and ports in Gdansk and to a coal mine in Silesia to persuade strikers to return to work, and he delivered the same message by phone to the Szczecin port and the Stalowa Wola steel mill. In the end, he bent all the strikers to his will, but workers who considered the strikes the best way to pressure the government appeared likely to hold Walesa responsible if the talks failed to produce concrete results. Although the government could easily undercut Walesa by torpedoing the talks, the Solidarity leader may be calculating that the government has just as much to lose as him if they fail. As a political scientist who advises Polish leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski suggested in a prominently published interview Friday, the meeting could be key for marshaling support for hard economic choices. It is easy to stir strikes, said Antoni Rajkiewicz, but ``very difficult to persuade people to do things ... demanding patience, endurance and thrift.'' He said the government needs through the talks not only to reach a working consensus with the Roman Catholic church and Solidarity activists, but also to stimulate the imagination and mobilize the mass of people now caught up in ``tides of hopelessness.'' The extent of the hopelessness was revealed in a poll of high school students. The poll, released Friday, said 64 percent believed they lacked chances to realize their life goals in Poland Meanwhile, there were growing signs in the press of a possible government shakeup to try to increase public support for the economic reform program, which so far has led to strikes and inflation expected to top 60 percent this year. ``The lack of confidence in the government is a political fact,'' the influential communist party weekly Polityka commented this week. Changes in the government ``will not deliver more money to our pockets or more goods to our shops,'' it said. ``However, they will give radical reform a boost.''
