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130 Int'l Lab. Rev. 145 (1991)
Shock Therapy for the Polish Labour Market

handle is hein.journals/intlr130 and id is 161 raw text is: International Labour Review, Vol. 130, 1991, No. 2 Shock therapy for the Polish labour market Marek GORA * Introduction T he aim of this paper is to put together some basic facts about recent developments in the Polish labour market. 1990 was a year of great social and economic change in Poland. A new economic programme introduced the most important elements of a market economy and signalled the end of the command system. The success of the programme will in large part determine the course of future economic and social development in Poland. The process of establishing a market economy in Poland has differed significantly from the experience of other Eastern European countries. First of all, it was much more accelerated and direct. This approach was chosen as the most promising from an economic standpoint. On the other hand, it is a more dangerous strategy from a social point of view. Today, more than a year after the new economic programme was introduced, it remains uncertain what the final results of the transition process will be. What is clear, however, is that the command economy ceased to exist in 1990 and any return to the old system is now impossible. The transition has proved much more difficult than expected. It has involved high costs which were made very apparent to Poles by a dramatic decline in real wages and a rapid rise in unemployment. On the other hand, Poland has also enjoyed some benefits. Shops are now full of goods and queues have disappeared, a situation unknown for many years. Certain aspects of the command economy persist in spite of the shift to a market system. Examples include labour hoarding in state enterprises, archaic structures of ownership and production, and habits and attitudes inherited from the past. These phenomena have made the transition process more difficult and, in some cases, have perpetuated command economy conditions. An array of labour problems, hidden for many years, are now being dealt with for the first time. But a genuinely efficient labour market will be achieved only in the long run and only once the influence of residual command phenomena has been greatly diminished. * Central School of Planning and Statistics, Warsaw. I wish to thank Otto Swank for useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and my colleagues at the Institute of Labour and Social Studies in Warsaw for supplying some recent data. I am also grateful to the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, which provided a perfect environment for my work on the paper. Copyright 0 International Labour Organization 1991

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