The workers at the Suez Trust for Weaving Industries are back on strike again, and their industrial action has entered its 8th day.
The private-owned factory has a total labor force of 1,200– a number that was once 15,000 when the company started operating in the late 1990s. The workers staged a sit-in 19 April 2007 with several demands including: their shares of profits unpaid since 1998, job contracts for the temporary workers, as well as social insurance and stepping up the industrial safety procedures whose relaxed standards lead to cases of deaths and injuries among the workers previously. The sit-in turned to a strike on 23 April that lasted till 6 May and was only disbanded hours before the meeting held between the strike leaders on the one hand, and the company’s management, Labor Ministry officials and the General Federation officials. Around 150 workers however kept rotating in a sit-in at the factory to keep the pressure. An agreement was brokered on 8 May, whereby the management pledged to pay the workers their shares of profits in July, and revoke the dismissal decrees against dozens of them. But the company owner Muhammad Ismail kept dodging the agreement, and promised to pay the workers in November, and then in January. The workers were shocked to find out then that the management had undervalued their shares of profits based on deliberate miscalculations. Hence, a strike was launched again on 14 January 2008, with the following demands:
1-The 10% shares based on the correct calculations of the company’s profits from 1998 to 2006
2- Allowances that covers: a) The daily eighth hour of work, b) hazardous nature jobs
3- A monthly LE100 allowance to help cope with the price increases