VICTORY for Ghazl el-Mahalla workers

I finally managed to get hold of the negotiating team in the morning. MAHALLA DID IT AGAIN AND SCORED A GREAT VICTORY!

The labor leaders’ delegation, which was comprised of the central figures in the December ’06 strike (Muhammad el-Attar, Sayyed Habib, Gehad Taman, Abdel Qader el-Deeb, Faisal Naqousha, Magdi Sherif, Ibrahim el-Tantawi), forced the government (represented yesterday by Labor Ministry officials, Hussein Megawer the head of the General Federation) to submit to most of the workers’ demands:

1-The “Development Incentives” (hafez el-tatweer) were raised: This bonus system used to be divided into three categories: Production Workers used to receive LE50 a month, Assistant-Production workers used to get paid LE37, while the daily-waged workers (janitors, cleaners, guards) used to get LE25.
The workers forced the government to reduce those categories into two: a) Both the production and the assistant-production workers will receive LE50, while the daily-waged workers will receive LE37.

2-The annual raise will be set at at 7%, after fluctuating up and down in the previous years according to the management’s mood, while the monthly bonuses will be raised so as to range from 20 to 25% of the monthly salaries.

4-The outdated pricing index used by the govt to determine the cost of the raw materials and the units produced will be modified. (Since the production was underpriced by the govt, this used to affect the workers’ bonuses.)

5-The annual share of profits will be from two to four months this year. (Last year it was 45 days only.)

6-No details are available yet, but the workers also forced the govt to come up with a new transportation service system for the company workers. New mini-buses will be bought by the company to help transport the workers (who come from the neighboring provinces and towns) to the factory daily.

7-A minimum wage will be determined for the newly instated workers. “This is mainly for our sons in the future when they join the company,” one of the labor leaders told me. “They have to get this minimum protection, so as not to go what we, their fathers, have gone through.”

8-LAST BUT NOT LEAST, the December ’06 strike leaders have managed to sideline, if not crush, the corrupt Factory Union Committee officials who were the target of the impeachment campaign, once and for all. Though the govt insisted on its refusal to impeach the officials, fearing this will trigger a wave of impeachment in other factories (both in the textile sector and others), the govt has in effect recognized who is running the show on the ground… None of the Factory Union Committee officials were invited to the meeting. Moreover, Hussein Megawer is quoted by the negotiators to have said: “Forget about them (local union). From now on, if there is anything in the factory, we will speak to you directly. We understand you now represent the workers with legitimacy.” This is short of the impeachment of course… but it is still a step forward in the long battle against the regime-dominated unions.

“What we did on the 1st of July scared them a lot,” said one of the December ’06 strike leaders. “They (govt) showed so much flexibility yesterday, that we ourselves were surprised.”
The planned 21 July strike has been called off by the Ghazl el-Mahalla leaders. But what happened yesterday will have a ripple effect on the textile sector at least in this coming period. If the govt does not generalize some of the Mahalla gains on the rest of the workers, this can well renew the wave of industrial action in the textile sector. Let’s wait and see what the statements of the govt officials will be like in tomorrow’s papers. And let’s wait to see if there’ll be any movement in the Nile Delta factories in the coming days. Most probably the first response will come from Kafr el-Dawar, and that will show us what the pulse is like among the textile workers. And as for Ghazl el-Mahalla itself, judging from the mood on the ground, I can only expect what happened yesterday will open the workers’ appetite for more. This is just the beginning.

Mabrouk for the Mahalla workers, the vanguard of the Egyptian working class.