On February 10, 1971, textile workers in the central Polish city of Łódź (known as "Poland's Manchester")[1] began a strike action, in which the majority of participants were women.
[2] These events have been largely forgotten because a few weeks earlier, major protests and street fights had taken place in the cities of northern Poland.
[6] A tense atmosphere was palpable in the city which was the Polish center of the textile industry, where majority of workers were female.
As informants of Communist secret services reported, employees of main factories talked among each other about high prices of food, desperate living conditions, and low wages.
This was due to two factors - the recent news of the bloodbath in the coastal cities, and the change in the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party, where on December 20, Edward Gierek was nominated as secretary general.
[8] The government and the Communist Party were openly criticized, and workers in city’s textile factories talked among themselves that changes in the Polish Politburo were not enough, and that these did not guarantee that bloody events of the December 1970 protests would not be repeated in the future.
Agents of the security services reported that Łódź workers frequently mentioned a strike - a term, which according to official propaganda was not supposed to even exist in Communist countries.
[9]), dilapidated buildings, poor health service, little rest, three shifts, high temperature, noise, and low salaries.
One of the reasons which precipitated the action was a TV interview with shipyard workers from the Baltic Coast, who said that as a result of their protests they had been granted a 25% pay rise.
However, instead of the number one person in Poland, in late evening on that day a delegation from Warsaw came to Łódź, headed by Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz.
[8]Another woman from Marchlewski, angry at the words Włodzimierz Kruczek of official trades unions, pulled down her pants and showed him her buttocks.
Female employees used a powerful argument while negotiating with the authorities - they frequently mentioned their children and the inability to feed and clothe them properly.
After Jaroszewicz’s visit and a subsequent meeting of the Politburo, on February 15, 1971, the government decided to cancel the increase in food prices,[4] which came into effect on March 1, 1971.
Finally, all strikes ended on the morning of February 17, with the two last textile plants – Defenders of Peace, and Feliks Dzierżyński returning to work.
Furthermore, Communist leaders were incensed to find out that the workers of Marchlewski collected money for a commemorative flag, with the inscription: Thank you, Holy Mother, for your protection on February 10–15, 1971.