The Real Estate Tax Collectors are now demonstrating in front of Parliament, where Hussein Megawer, the head of the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions is having a meeting.
UPDATE: A report by Al-Masry Al-Youm…
Hundreds of property tax collectors demonstrated Thursday in downtown Cairo, with thousands of their colleagues staging sit-ins in the provinces, denouncing the Finance Minister’s “betrayal” of the agreement struck last week with the independent trade unionists over social welfare funds.
Protesters, led by representatives of the independent Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees, chanted against the minister’s move to marginalize their union, in favor of the state-backed General Union of Bank, Insurance and Finance Employees.
The Finance Sector has been the scene of an ongoing two-year fight, with the property tax collectors mobilizing national strikes and protests from 2007, over work conditions and union rights. The victory of their three-month strike in the fall/winter of 2007 saw salary increases by 325 per cent. The strike was run by an unofficial elected strike leadership, at a time when the state-backed union denounced the civil servants’ protests. In response, the unofficial leadership declared itself as an alternative union last December, winning the support of more 35,000 out of the 55,000 property tax collectors in Egypt. The new union was recognized by international labor bodies, and secured legal recognition last April from the Egyptian Labor Ministry.
“They were forced into it,” said Kamal Abu Eita, the leader of the independent union. “But they never stopped their conspiracies to destroy the free union. [The head of state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions] Hussein Megawer is using all his weapons now against us.”
Abu Eita and his colleagues complain of harassment, administrative witch-hunt and “hijacking the good projects we want to do.”
Last Thursday, Finance Minister Youssef Boutross Ghali agreed under pressure to issue a ministerial decree, allowing the independent union to establish a Social Welfare Fund, whereby each property tax collector would receive 110-month pay. Yesterday evening however the minister “readjusted” his decree, taking the independent union out of the agreement, and sanctioning the fund officially to the state-backed union.
In response, the independent union called for national protests today in the provinces, and in Cairo.
Civil servants gathered in the morning in front of the Real Estate Tax Authority HQ in Mounira, and then moved to the parliament where Hussein Megawer was meeting government officials.
“We aren’t moving until the [minister’s] decree wording is changed,” Ahmad Mokhtar, a data management administrator at Real Estate Information Center, said.
Tarek Mostafa, a Qalyoubiya tax collector and the independent union’s treasurer shouted: “We have our own syndicate which represents us. The [state-backed] General Union does not represent us.”
The public syndicate for Real Estate employees has strived for establishing the fund for a year and a half and afforded its costs, according to Mostafa.
“They want to control the fund yet after they knew there is one billion and 120 million LE,” he added.
Protests and sit-ins were reported in the provinces, the strongest of which were in the Nile Delta town province of Daqahliya, from where a good number of the strike leaders hailed.
“This is just a warning,” said Abu Eita. “Next week we’ll mobilize a bigger protest all over Egypt if the ministry doesn’t respond.”