Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee (or Inter-Factory Strike Committee, , MKS) was an action strike committee formed in Gdańsk Shipyard, People's Republic of Poland on 16 August 1980. It was led by Lech Wałęsa and others and is famous for issuing the 21 demands of MKS on 17 August, that eventually led to the Gdańsk Agreement and creation of Solidarity. Background The widespread strikes of 1980 were far from being the first clashes between the ruling party and the working class in Poland after World War II. Despite having a "socialist" government, the elite of the Polish ruling class averaged an income twenty times that of the blue-collar worker. This elite ruling class owned or largely controlled the police, media and industry of the state, including the state-organized unions. Insufficient pay and food shortages, in addition to a growing movement in favor of independent union activism led to strikes in 1956 and 1970 which left hundreds of workers dead from clashes with police, and both the 1970 and 1976 strikes ended with some concessions but subsequent additional repressions from management. Workers were increasingly dissatisfied with their standard of living and the half-hearted responses of the government to their calls for social justice, and when in July 1980 the government attempted to raise the price of meat even further, sit-in strikes started up again. The early days When, in August 1980, Anna Walentynowicz lost her job at the Gdańsk Shipyard because of her position as editor of the underground newspaper Robotnik Wybrzeze, her fellow workers took action. Around 16,000 employees of the shipyard discontinued their work and occupied its premises on the morning of August 14, demanding Walentynowicz's re-employment, the erection of a monument in honor of the victims of the strikes of 1970, and a pay rise of 2000 zlotys, amongst other things. After negotiating with management and having most of their demands met, a vote was taken on August 16 leading to the strike being called off. By this time, however, many of the workers at facilities surrounding the Gdańsk Shipyard had begun their own strikes making similar demands, and it was decided that in solidarity with them, the workers in the shipyard would continue to strike despite their own demands having been met. By the next morning the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee (Polish shorthand: MKS) had been formed within the gates of the shipyard, intending to unite workers in the Gdańsk-Sopot-Gdynia