Another big walkout in Poland

Workers walked out in hundreds of Polish factories Wednesday in the most widespread strikes since last summer's shipyard confrontation that brought Poland's labor revolution. The new outbreak of strikes coincided with a closed-door strategy session of the Solidarity union movement's national leadership, in which the union called a one-hour national strike for next Tuesday and threatened to meet on Feb. 18 to set a date for a general strike unless the government negotiated a settlement on a wide range of disputes. But simultaneously the commission called for an end to all local strikes, which have spread throughout the country in the last two weeks. "We appeal to the government to display a sense of responsibility . . . by making use of the period when strike actions are suspended to resolve the disputes through negotiation, " the commission said.