I received the following message from a friend, accompanied by a couple of videos from the Ghazl Shebeen el-Kom strike:
Here are some videos taken last Saturday by (one of the strikers) during Sa’id al-Gawhury’s visit to Indorama company (formerly Ghazl Shebeen). I haven’t had a chance to edit them but there are some shots of the workers and of Gawhury saying he’ll take the matter to the international textile federation… The workers have been on strike since Thursday 5 March, protesting against the management’s refusal to pay their yearly bonuses (minha) ie. 228 days of salary. The management has been pretexting the financial crisis and company losses to justify its decision.
In a statement released last evening the management has threatened to fire the workers who carry on the strike and claimed that the strike infringes the labor law.
For the first time the company’s union committee is supporting the workers and even has initiated the protest. In previous protests, the company’s union committee had condemned the strikes, up to the point that in February 2007 workers had attempted to withdraw the confidence to the local union – but the process was not taken further after the strike. So needless to say that the company’s union committee was unpopular among the workers and until recently leaflets have been circulated inside the factory insulting the head of the union committee and accusing him to stand by the management’s side.
For background info on the company and workers’ grievances against the management, check this El-Badeel report.
Some stats from that El-Badeel article show the level of tension in the factory: During 2007 and 2008, the workers staged 76 strikes in 22 months, since it was privatized to the Indian investors.
The behavior of Said el-Gohary, the notorious head of the state-backed General Union of Textile Workers deserves a closer look. Gohary is originally a worker from Ghazl Shebeen itself. This was where he started his “trade unionist” career. The guy has been coming under strong pressures since the outbreak of the Winter of Labor Discontent in December 2006. The current wave of labor militancy–the strongest the country has witnessed since the 1946 strike wave–is centered in textile sector, i.e. in Gohary’s backyard. Gohary took hostile stands as expected against the strikes and did his best to sabotage them, performing the exact role the state expects him to perform. But that is not an easy job. The ferment in the textile sector continues. Gohary and his henchmen are the target of the workers’ wrath. At the same time the whole state-backed union bureaucracy, nestled in the corrupt General Federation of Trade Unions, are pissing in their pants, as it is no secret any more the country is to about to embrace a wave of unionization away from the police-dominated General Federation. While it’s their job to serve as a tool of control and a buffer between the state and the workers (for the interest of the former), Gohary and his counterparts in the other General Unions are increasingly feeling their raison d’etre is about terminate. While on the one hand this will push many in their ranks more into the arms of the state and employ its forces in directly crushing strikes and free unionization attempts, the union bureaucrats know well it would be suicidal not to at least partially respond to the workers pressures and adopt a “tough” rhetoric against employers. Gohary, to whom strikes in his own original factory Ghazl Shebeen is a personal embarrassment, have been giving fiery statements to the media recently, threatening and warning of more explosive strikes to come in the textile sector!
We can expect in the coming period more militant rhetoric from the state-backed unions in support of the strikes. We can expect to see some of those General Unions committing some of their resources to industrial actions. But that should not fool us. The General Federation is a hopeless structure and cannot be reformed. It’s was established in 1957 for one reason only, and that’s to control working class movement. This structure has to be smashed. The fight to build free unions must continue.