MR LECH WALESA, the former Solidarity union leader who became Poland's first post war democratic president, returned to his old job as a £165 a month electrician at the Gdansk shipyard yesterday.
Mr Walesa said he was returning to the ailing yard where he established the Soviet bloc's first free trade union 15 years ago mainly because ex-communist foes had still not passed a law giving him a pension as a former president.
"From yesterday I have been without means of support. I have to go back to work," he told a news conference in the shipyard hall where Solidarity was founded.
"This hall represents for me the best, but also the most difficult moments of my life," he said.
Mr Walesa (52), who was narrowly defeated by an ex-communist, Mr Aleksander Kwasniewski, in elections last November, drove into the yard in his official Mercedes accompanied by a bodyguard who will earn almost twice as much as he does watching him repair electric trolleys.
Yesterday Mr Walesa was having a compulsory medical exam and a course on industrial safety. He will join his old work mates in the freshly green painted work shop later this week.
The former president said on Monday he thought the delay in authorising his pension, now before the left dominated parliament, was due to malice.
Mr Walesa said he would give up the job when parliament settled the pension, as it would be hard to combine it in the long term with his political activities.
After his daily shift of eight hours 45 minutes, Mr Walesa will move to his Gdansk office to continue his efforts to coax the fragmented opposition parties descended from Solidarity into a bloc able to beat the left in general elections next year.
His shipyard contract allows him one day a week to travel round Poland on political business. He is also a consultant to Solidarity's national organisation, and is working on a new book and a film.
Since the elections Mr Walesa has been pressed by authorities for back taxes of $1 million (£637,000) he received from a US film studio in 1989, which he says he does not owe.
While he has said his monthly wages of 600 zlotys was not enough to pay his rent and gas bills, he is far from impoverished. He has hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets and can earn large sums on the international lecture circuit. He is due to visit the US from April 9th.
During his time there he has promised to help efforts to find investors for the heavily debt laden Gdansk yard.
The government yesterday advertised in Poland and abroad for a buyer for 60 per cent of the enterprise's shares owned by the treasury.