Talks with premier fail to satisfy Polish union

November 3, 1980

Union leader Lech Walesa emerged from a marathon round of talks with Prime Minister Josef Pinkowski declaring that the possibility of a national strike remains. He said he and the government failed to agree on a joint communique, and he reviewed the talks with seeming resignation.

"We talked about everything and nothing," he said.

The Solidarity group had threatened to call a national strike Nov. 12 if the talks were unsatisfactory. The union, which claims a membership of some 10 million workers, entered the talks disputing above all the wording of its statutes, rewritten by a Warsaw court to contain a clause binding it to the supremacy of communism in Poland. The Supreme Court is to consider an appeal against the ruling by Nov. 11.