Bureaucrats are uncomfortable with the number two thousand for some reason. Not ten, not a hundred—those are doable, unimportant. However, the math shifts when 2,000 teachers in one Polish city decide, almost at the same time, that they’ve had enough. Schedules fall apart. Parents rush around. After years of underpaying educators, politicians suddenly show a keen interest in “dialogue.”
The strikes in Poland’s educational system were not sudden. Salaries that barely covered a third of a family’s living expenses, a disorganized school reform that eliminated junior high schools overnight and eliminated 6,600 teaching positions, and a career promotion timeline that subtly stretched from ten to fifteen years all contributed to their growth. In April 2019, about 14,000 schools and kindergartens participated in a general strike called by the Polish Teachers’ Union and the Trade Union Forum. However, the walkout had a special significance in some cities. Imagine a mid-sized Polish city where almost all of the schools close. The hallways are deserted. For five days, chalk dust accumulates on desks that no one will use. It turns out that silence is overwhelming.
In five days, what can 2,000 teachers achieve? Depending on how you define success, quite a bit. Exams were postponed, parents were compelled to make emergency childcare arrangements, and government representatives were forced to appear on television to justify the recruitment of priests and forest guards as stand-in exam proctors. The immediate disruption was evident. Even now, that final detail seems unreal. The government passed a last-minute amendment permitting almost anyone with a pulse and some authority to supervise students because they were unable to staff junior high school exams with actual teachers. Barely, and only once, did it work.
However, the more profound achievement was cultural. Poland’s striking teachers learned something that labor movements around the world eventually come to understand: public sympathy is brittle and requires more than just complaining. It calls for a certain level of moral clarity. Teachers making between 2,400 and 3,300 zloty a month, or roughly $630 to $867, far less than the average salary of $1,235 in Poland, weren’t demanding luxury. They were pleading not to live in poverty. That message was received. The majority of people supported it, according to surveys. In just twenty-four hours, a strike fund established on April 11 raised more than one million zloty. That number tripled in just two days. Support was expressed even by Henryka Bochniarz, the former head of Poland’s employer confederation and not a natural union supporter. Although she was probably more motivated to oppose the ruling Law and Justice party than to support collective bargaining, solidarity is solidarity regardless of where it comes from.
Teacher strikes are often seen as short-term disruptions and political calendar footnotes. However, there were hints of something more ancient in what transpired in Polish cities over those five days. During World War II, Poland lost almost 10,000 qualified educators. A small number of teachers, sometimes fewer than ten, rebuilt school systems from rubble in cities like Szczecin, where the entire population was virtually replaced after 1945. Veteran of the Warsaw Uprising and survivor of a concentration camp, Janina Szczerska came to Szczecin in May 1945 and by September had established a high school with thirty pupils and eight teachers. Enrollment had increased to 723 by the end of the year. Because their pay did not cover half of their basic living expenses, the teaching staff turned over at rates higher than 40% per year. Does that sound familiar?
Teachers in Poland have always worked in the space between a nation’s declared values and its actual funding. The demands made by the 2019 strikers were not radical. They requested an increase of roughly $260 a month. A year later, the government responded with a plan that included merit-based bonuses beginning at $25 per month. It’s difficult not to interpret that as an insult disguised as policy.
It’s not long—five days. Curriculum doesn’t disappear, buildings don’t collapse, and kids don’t lose their reading skills. However, it leaves a mark when two thousand educators stand together in one city and refuse to pretend that poverty is a vocation and fatigue is dedication. It’s the dialogue, not the infrastructure. And sometimes what constitutes success is simply shifting the topic of discussion.
