Alina Pienkowska
Alina Barbara Pienkowska (12 January 1952 – 17 October 2002; her surname is often misspelt as Pieńkowska) was a Polish free trade union activist and a Senator for Gdańsk (1991–1993, Solidarity Parliamentary Club). She was involved in the creation of Solidarity, of which she was a member of its organizing committee. Biography Pienkowska's father worked in the Lenin Shipyard and had joined in the shipyard workers' protest of December 1970. In 1980 she was a young, widowed mother (of a son, Sebastian) working as the shipyard nurse. She had been one of the founders of the underground Free Trade Unions of the Coast in the 1970s. She wrote health-related articles for the underground journal, The Coastal Worker, mostly related to shipyard safety and rising accident rates. The August 1980 strike started on the 14th over the firing of Anna Walentynowicz. All of the phone lines into the shipyard were cut except to the clinic, and as the nurse, Pienkowska was instrumental in communicating to the outside world about the strike that ultimately spread to the Baltic coast and the giant wave of strikes in Poland. Her first call was to Jacek Kuroń of the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) in Warsaw.