The communist government announced increases in food prices on December 12, 1970. For example the prices for meat products were raised by up to 100 percent. Strikes and street demonstrations took place in the Baltic ports of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Szczecin, and Elbląg. Security forces, together with units of the Polish Army massacred at least 42 protesting workers in December. More than 1,000 people were wounded. The news of these events quickly reached Łódź in spite of the government's censorship and media blackout. A tense atmosphere was palpable in the city which was the Polish center of the textile industry, where majority of workers were female. As informants of Communist secret services reported, employees of main factories talked among each other about high prices of food, desperate living conditions, and low wages. Some brought up the possibility of a strike, but in December 1970 no open protests took place. This was due to two factors - the recent news of the bloodbath in the coastal cities, and the change in the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party, where on December 20, Edward Gierek was nominated as Secretary General. Nevertheless, the government did not back out of the food price increase.