I received the following report form journalist and friend Jano Charbel, on the recent labor union elections he monitored.
Trade Union Elections Conducted Amidst Labor Ministry Interference
The nationwide trade union elections for 2006-2011 are in progress. This comes after extensive reports of vote rigging, ballot buying, and electoral fraud in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the two year postponement of municipal elections, widespread claims of voting irregularities in the elections for the chambers of commerce, and the yearly violations of student union elections.
The labor ministry has been actively interfering in all levels of the electoral process of the country’s trade unions – from the barring of over 12,000 opposition candidates (especially the Moslem Brotherhood) from running, to appeals against court verdicts requiring comprehensive judicial supervision of the elections, to the control of labor ministry personnel over ballot boxes, election monitoring, and vote counting.
“There are only 32 magistrates monitoring these elections – one in each of the 26 governorates plus one in each of six industrial zones” said Khaled Ali, a labor lawyer at the independent Hisham Mubarak Human Rights Center.
The Director of the independent Center for Trade Union & Workers’ Services, Kamal Abbas, said that “32 magistrates are not at all enough to adequately monitor these country-wide elections. Moreover, not all these magistrates are actually judges; there are some prosecutors amongst them. It is primarily the hand-picked labor ministry personnel who are, in fact, responsible for monitoring the elections and counting the votes. These personnel, if left unmonitored, are empowered pick and chose those votes that they want and discard those that they don’t want.”
Seeking to keep the judges out, on November 4th Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hady appealed against an Administrative Court ruling issued on November 2 to the effect that these union elections must be conducted under comprehensive judicial supervision.
Five years earlier the Supreme Constitutional Court issued a ruling declaring the results of the 2001-2006 trade union elections null and void. The SCC ruling was, however, entirely disregarded.
Despite these interventions and violations well over one million workers exercised their right to vote in nationwide trade union elections conducted on November 8. These elections were for 816 local union councils affiliated to 11 general unions (including – those of the Textile Workers, Public Utilities Workers, Railway Workers, Food Processing Workers, Electrical, Engineering & Metal Workers, Pharmaceutical & Chemical Workers, Printing, Publishing & Media Workers, Hotel & Tourism Workers, Administrative & Social Services Workers, Military Production Workers, and Petroleum Workers .)
A total of 1,403,766 workers cast their votes in nationwide trade union elections conducted on November 8 – representing a high voter turnout rate of between 60%-70% of all those unionized workers with the right to vote (according to the statistics issued by the Center for Trade Union & Workers’ Services.) This round of elections was extremely lively and highly competitive with a total of 16,835 candidates running for seats on 816 local union councils.
I was lucky enough to visit two unions during the voting process yesterday – including 1 of the 24 Cairo-based railway workers’ unions (there are a total of 34 such unions nationwide,) and the Helwan Iron & Steel Factory.
The railway elections were crowded, loud, and bustling with activity. 31 candidates were competing for 11 union council seats; around ten candidates from the Moslem Brotherhood, and one leftist candidate, were barred from running after the General Union of Railway Workers denied them their certification papers. One railway worker, Tagammu Party Member Reda Araby, who had been delegated by his co-workers to monitor the elections, said that “1,499 workers out of 2,204 had cast their votes – representing a voter turnout rate of over 68%”
“Voting started at 9am and ended at 5pm, yet the process of vote counting continued into the early hours” said Araby.
On election day at the Helwan Iron & Steel Factory – which is actually a giant industrial complex with tens of factories within, where buses transport the nearly 13,000 workers about, while trains carry industrial goods to and from the different work stations – there were a couple of surprise visitors.
Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hady and the President of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, Hussein Megawer, had dropped by the mammoth industrial complex for a speedy check-up on voting. When asked why the ballot boxes in use were not the standard transparent glass boxes used in the parliamentary elections? The minister, surrounded by dozens of bodyguards and journalists, replied “the glass ballot boxes are being put to use, but there are not enough to go around.” She and Megawer then boarded their black Mercedes and sped away.
Two leftist workers at the Helwan complex, Yousef Rashwan and Mustafa Naiyed, showed me around the factories and the 40 polling stations. They said that there were “numerous cases of electoral fraud and vote-rigging which were orchestrated by the factories’ administrations, and labor ministry personnel.” Seven candidates from the Moslem Brotherhood and one leftist candidate were prevented from running in these elections.
Rashwan said that “the polling stations were supposed to be open at 9am, but voting did not start until 10:30am. Many of the workers grew impatient and left, others could not leave their work stations.”
Naiyed, a union council member from 1996-2001, said that one of the ballot boxes was missing a cover and a lock, the workers demanded that this box must not be utilized as such, we had our way in the end. But then again, the labor ministry personnel have the ability to distort the votes in favor of those candidates that the ministry and the administration support.”
More alarmingly, Naiyed added “I had received my certification papers and had followed all the necessary procedures, yet I was shocked to find that my name was excluded from the electoral rosters. I am filing a case before the administrative courts against this violation.”
Both Rashwan and Naiyed were unsuccessful in securing seats on their local union council – likely due to the fact that they are vocal opposition workers.
Out of 12,575 workers only about 2,300 cast their votes (less than a 20% voter turnout) for the 94 candidates running for 21 seats on the union council.
The election process continues, nonetheless. Following the November 5th elections for the labor ministry’s employees, and the November 8th elections, there are elections for those hundreds of local unions affiliated to the remaining 12 general unions on November 13. Indirect elections for the 23 general unions are to be held on the 20th, and the Egyptian Trade Union Federation Council elections are scheduled for the 27th. Many more violations are expected.