Homeless in Poland, Men Dream of Odyssey

WARSAW — Two dozen homeless men are building a ship to sail themselves around the world at the St. Lazarus Social Pension here, in the yard of a former tractor factory. Sparks fly from the rusty 55-foot hull as they weld it into form, even after losing the priest who led and inspired the mission.

These men with sharply lined faces and blurry, old tattoos have set out to prove their seaworthiness, and to prove that they have some value to society, even if society has largely written them off.

“Some people smack themselves in the head when they hear, and probably think we’re crazy,” said Slawomir Michalski, 51, who was a welder in the famous Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk and joined the strike led by Lech Walesa in 1980 that helped shake the foundation of Communist rule in Poland and the entire Soviet bloc. It was a singular moment in Polish history and one that adds resonance to tales of shipbuilding here.

But their story strikes deeper chords because, for all the modern tools in the building and corporate sponsors providing the raw materials, their endeavor echoes mythic themes of escape, adventure and redemption that can seem out of reach in a world of biometric identity cards and debt-collection agencies.

In the process, the 25 hard-luck Poles working on the project are wrestling with the notion of building a dream boat away from the hulking megayachts of the technology mogul Larry Ellison and the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, but closer to the ideal of another snakebit sailor who had to rough it: Odysseus.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/world/europe/02poland.html?ref=global-home

Legendary Gdansk shipyard set to close
5:00AM Thursday Aug 23, 2007
By Tony Paterson

The Baltic shipyard that gave birth to Poland's legendary Solidarity trade union faced the prospect of imminent closure yesterday as Warsaw and the European Union locked horns over plans for the future of the loss-making yet hugely subsidised docks.

...yesterday the yard's future was in the balance as Poland and the EU argued over a rescue plan for the docks. Under capitalism the dock's workforce has been cut to 3000 and the yard has relied almost entirely on Brussels subsidies in order to survive against tough competition from Southeast Asia.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ports/news/article.cfm?c_id=284&objectid=10459333



"Slawomir Michalski, 51, who was a welder in the famous Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk and joined the strike led by Lech Walesa in 1980 that helped shake the foundation of Communist rule in Poland"

Privatized & "right-sized". Don't need those old "freedom fighters" now that "investors" got the assets.

Not that the fucking new york times deigns to mention that little piece of the subjects' personal histories, the day they lost their jobs in the new high unemployment democracy.

:kick:

Older workers are not as pliant, and they expect to be well-paid for their expertise, having spent a long time perfecting their skills. They also tend to not be quiet when it comes to voicing their displeasure.

In western countries where health care is tied to employment, these people are also the ones who tend to actually USE that health care benefit. Younger workers may use it occasionally for a broken bone or an acute illness, but older ones are the ones with chronic ailments.

In socialist/communist countries, theres almost a camaraderie that exists between the workers.. They all grouse together about the "big boss", but they do it carefully. When there are food shortages, they are all in it together.. they all have basically the same lot in life. It's got to be boring and bleak at times, but at least they can take comfort in knowing they will always have a job, and they have value..even if it's kind of a cog in a wheel value. They will not be discarded and tossed aside like a greasy old rag.

When capitalism arrives & the almighty bottom line is the lord & master, it makes "sense" to hire only the cheapest labor, and as little as possible, at that.

When businesses are no longer the responsibility of "the state", workers who get shunted aside are no longer their problem either. Darwinian capitalism has no place for older workers, except for maybe training their younger, cheaper replacements.

Well geez, I guess you can look at it that way. For everyone who sees the silver lining, there must be an equal or greater number who see the dark cloud.

I guess I look at it as a story of hope and renewal. There has never been a society, nor do I believe there ever will be, that has not had people at the margins. It's always been a part of the human condition. Regardless of the society, there are always people who can benefit from reaching well beyond where they have ever reached before. In fact, you don't even have to be on the margins to benefit, IMHO. The homeless and the unemployed or under-employed. The executive stuck in a soul sucking black hole of a job. The housewife who looks for renewal after two decades at home raising children.

But hey. Although there are a hell of a lot of dark clouds around these days, every once in a while I like to peek around it to see if there's something to be learned from it on the other side.

:dilemma:

and many with a much lower % of homeless than now obtains in the US or Eastern Europe.

but trust the nyt to turn a tragedy into a hollywood feel-good story.

the noble homeless triumphing over adversity by building a boat to go on a pointless voyage.

to prove they're still "men" to the society who turned them into waste.

the beneficiaries of their dis-employment - the wealthy - now celebrate their pointless voyage in the pages of the nyt, & charitably fund it.

what's the news here? ex-shipyard workers know how to built boats? could still build them if they could get jobs?

sick, sick, sick.

*The Sirens