Solidarity eyes challenge to Poland's leadership Poland's Solidarity labour union is now just a shadow of the force that helped bring down European communism a quarter century ago, but the rump organisation's leader is hoping to revive the union's fortunes by taking on another target - prime minister Donald Tusk. Sitting in his office just metres away from the Gdansk shipyard where Solidarity was born in 1980, Piotr Duda, a stocky former steel worker and army commando, laid out his case against Mr Tusk's centrist government, in power since 2007. What Poland has accomplished over the last decades has come at the cost of Polish workers. We want workers to finally get their share," he said, denouncing the Tusk government's recent reforms which are gradually raising the retirement age to 67. He also decried Polish labour law which allows millions to work on temporary contracts that have much less security than permanent ones. Mr Duda, 51, is turning into one of Mr Tusk's most formidable opponents, in part because of the lacklustre performance of the opposition Law and Justice party - which has nosed ahead of Mr Tusk's Civic Platform in opinion polls but which has been unable to present an attractive alternative programme. Mr Duda and other union chiefs organised one of the largest demonstrations in Poland's post-communist history last month, with as many as 100,000 people taking to the streets of Warsaw to vent their displeasure at the government. He has previously threatened a general strike if conditions for workers do not improve. "A lot of people may have thought that Solidarity did not exist any more - but the demonstrations proved that people are angry," Mr Duda said, a white and red Solidarity banner hanging on the wall behind his desk. Part of that anger comes from the unexpectedly sharp slowdown in the economy, which pushed unemployment to 13 per cent. However, new data show that the economy is starting to recover. There is also a frustration, especially in the smaller towns and villages where wages are low and opportunities much fewer than in Poland's largest cities. Mr Tusk, who seems to have lost some of the charisma and common touch that propelled him to a record two electoral victories, has seen his support shrivel in opinion polls. A survey showed 77 per cent of those polled criticised the performance of the government and 73 per cent were dissatisfied with him. Mr Duda is hoping to capitalise on that disapproval to revive Solidarity as a powerful national force. However, the job is going to be a difficult one. Solidarity today is a pale shadow of the 10m-strong organisation that shook the Soviet bloc to its core in 1980. It never regained such strength. Even by 1989, when it led the forces that defeated the communists in the first partly free elections since the war, Solidarity's membership had shrunk to 1.5m. It now has only about 680,000 members and is slightly smaller than its rival OPZZ union. In spite of a history of labour activism, only about 12 per cent of Polish workers are unionised, one of the lowest levels in the EU. In the first decade after communism Solidarity had a difficult time deciding whether it was a political force or a trade union, and many of its leading members and supporters, including Mr Tusk, drifted away to become conventional politicians. Lech Walesa, who helped found the union, is no longer a member, and even suggested last year that union members, with Mr Duda in the forefront, could do with a stiff beating from the police for causing problems for Mr Tusk's government. Mr Walesa has said that he no longer identifies with Solidarity and regrets that the union was not dissolved and its distinctive banner furled when it won its historic battle against communism. Mr Duda was caustic about Mr Walesa's disdain for the union he helped build. "There is only one Solidarity and we are it," he said. These people say we are a relic of the past but we're still defending workers' rights, the same reason that Solidarity was formed in 1980. This was never Walesa's private union. Although he denies holding political ambitions, Mr Duda is hoping that his crusade against Mr Tusk and his government's "neo-liberal policies" will put some life back in the old union. "My mission is to help Polish workers," he said, rising from his chair in animation. I'm a union man in my blood and my bones. If matters affect working people, we want to have a deciding voice.