- The workers in 1980 had a great courage to stand up to the evil represented by the communist authorities supported by Moscow - said Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki before the monument commemorating the signing of the Jastrzębie Agreement. - The workers fought for dignity, for normality.
Miners from the “Manifest Lipcowy” mine (currently the Zofiówka Section) joined the nationwide workers’ protests in August 1980. The Inter-Company Strike Committee was established, grouping together 56 strike committees from a number of Silesian cities and companies. The Jastrzębie Committee added its own postulates to the 21 demands put forward by the workers from the enterprises participating in the strike on the Coast. According to the Agreement signed on 3 September 1980, which is deemed to be part of the August Agreements, the then government agreed, among others, to introduce free Saturdays and Sundays, introduce minimum wages and lift the four-shift work system in mines. -We are meeting here, before the Zofiówka mine, to say “We remember”. We remember that you overcame your fear, that you showed solidarity with the protesting Coast and added your own employee postulates- said Piotr Duda, Chairman of the National Commission of NSZZ Solidarność Trade Union during the celebrations. - Here, in Jastrzębie-Zdrój, during the signing of the Jastrzębie Agreement, the miners put another nail in the coffin of the communist system which enslaved human beings, and thus also employees.
During the celebrations, Andrzej Dera, secretary of state at the President’s Office, read out a letter from the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda.
