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Underwear in Poland is knotted up to all hell in connection with the upcoming 20th anniversary celebrations of the defeat of communism. Prime minister Tusk invited some other East – sorry central – European leaders to a shindig in Gdańsk, where it all began but the trade union spoilsports decided to hold a protest there on the same day so Tusk did the statesmanlike thing and turned tail, bolting to Kraków for fear that other East – sorry central – European leaders might be exposed to the shocking sight of workers protesting, which was supposed to have ended – oh – twenty years ago, all of which is being exploited by the opposition (PiS, not KOR), with primesident Kaczyński promising a visit to Gdańsk and an awfully awfully important debate on the telly tonight between Tusk and somebody else what with European elections coming up and Palikot and Pitera and Ziobro and Róża Thun and it’s all very complicated so I’ll get straight to the point:

They’ve invited Kylie Minogue to celebrate the anniversary. Minogue has – like Madonna and Spinal Tap – reinvented herself so often that it might be worth reminding younger readers what she sounded like around the time the Polish working class was overthrowing communism:

She’s appearing with the Scorpions (“The Winner Change”). I hate to be a snob but the Polish for classical music is “muzyka poważna,” which means literally “serious music.” Could they not have got something a little more poważna?

A great deal between employers and unions is being trumpeted around about now in Poland. In return for an end to “temporary” work contracts with durations of up to twenty years, the unions have agreed to increased elasticity of working hours. Many people will be familiar with the abuse of temporary work contracts; the three month probation period followed by the one year contract followed by the sack followed by – six months later, to get around the law – another one-year contract and so on until you drop down dead without a pension. Presumably, many people will soon become familiar with the abuse of “elastic” working hours.

Permit me to indulge in my radicalism here – but why did the unions agree to give anything in return for an end to this abuse? They are effectively buying their way out of exploitation. When an East European prostitute finally earns enough money to buy her passport back from the gangster who confiscated it after telling her she would be working in a German restaurant this is hardly to be greeted as a great victory for workers’ rights.

The front page of today’s Gazeta Wyborcza - apart from the strange claim that a 46.7% voter share for the left wing candidate in France’s presidential elections is a “crushing” defeat - re-runs the pensions time bomb scare story. The story is expanded on in the economics section and commented on by Witold Gadomski on page two, so it’s obviously Quite Serious. To recap: people aren’t screwing each other enough and they’re living too long so in a few years there will be no one left to support all the old folk. Poland’s population is predicted to fall to 30 million by 2030.

Unusually, the newspaper does mention the small matter of economic growth (or “increasing wealth”). However, rapid economic growth will not last and anyway it means that in a few years time there will be a shortage of workers in certain sectors. Are you following this? I amn’t. Something called the Institute for Structural Research says that increasing the length of time people spend with their noses to the grindstone is essential: the alternative is to raise taxes to pay for pensions. Given the choice, I’d pay more tax myself, but what the article does not mention is that it takes ever fewer workers to generate the same amount of wealth.

A trade union you may have heard of (Solidarity) commissioned a report sometime back from a French company. The report was titled “Niskie płace barierą rozwoju Polski” (Low pay is a barrier to Poland’s development). It is not referred to in GW. No trade union or anyone that might be reasonably said to represent working people is quoted in the article. The report found that from 1995 to 2000 “wydajność pracy” (literally, “work output”) increased by 58.3%. From 2000 to 2005 it increased by 19.5% (Nie 17-18/2007). That’s a lot of extra revenue to splash around on - oh, I don’t know - say, pensions for people who live longer than economists would like them to.

You would think that with their glorious and recent history of trade unionism the Poles would know a thing or two about striking. Today’s Dziennik carries a story about the doctors’ strike. It seems that the good doctors are manning the picket lines in their public hospitals in the morning and then, in the balmy afternoons, gracefully retiring to their oak-panelled private consultancy chambers where those members of the public who were denied state treatment earlier during the day can now buy it from the “striking” doctors.

The article is accompanied by a picture of Dr. Andrzej Spisak, his hands spread out in wide-eyed wonder that anyone might find this behaviour anything less than ethical. His lab coat bears the name of a limited company…