I received the following report from journalist and friend Jano Charbel, who’s been monitoring the labor union elections…
NDP Abducts the Egyptian Trade Union Federation
The leadership of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation Council, the highest ranking trade union body in the country, was determined by default (without elections) on November 27.
The results revealed that the National Democratic Party has, again, abducted the ETUF Council. The ruling NDP took control of 22 out of the 23 ETUF Council seats – while one Tagammu Party member, Abdel Rahman Kheir, who was working in close coordination with the NDP against other opposition and independent candidates, managed to secure a seat for himself.
The NDP’s Hussein Megawer has managed to preserve his position as president of the ETUF Council. Megawer took over the post from the NDP’s Sayyed Rashid after the ruling regime decided, earlier this year, to replace him. Rashid was the ETUF President from 1992-2006.
With the NDP’s domination over the country’s trade unions, the ruling regime and its businessmen allies, are now able to ensure that privatizations of public sector enterprises will be approved by the upper echelons of the union leadership; while simultaneously ensuring that workers’ strikes in opposition to privatization will remain unauthorized and illegal.
This Year’s “Workers’ Elections the Worst Ever that Egypt has ever Witnessed”
The independent Center for Trade Union & Workers’ Services held a conference on November 28, at the Journalists’ Syndicate in downtown Cairo , one day after the results of the ETUF Council were announced.
This conference served to analyze the proceedings of the nationwide elections for the 2006-2011 trade union term, as well as announcing the multitude of electoral violations which took place. (final CTUWS report attached.)
Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hady had described these elections as being “impartial, clean, and democratic.”
However, the Program Director at the CTUWS, Rahma Refaat, said that these elections were “undemocratic and non-transparent” adding that they were “the worst ever in terms of violations, and the worst elections conducted throughout the history of the Egyptian trade union movement.”
“Thousands of (would-be) candidates were barred from running in these elections – they were barred by their general unions, security apparatuses, workplace administrations, and by other (well connected) candidates,” said Refaat.
She went on to say that Egypt’s labor and trade union laws are, themselves, violations of workers’ rights – since they violate the object and purpose of those conventions which Egypt has ratified, including the International Labor Organization’s Convention 67 (Freedom of Association & Protection of the Right to Organize) and Convention 98 (Right to Organize & Collective Bargaining)
Abdel Ghaffar Shokr, a prominent leader in the Socialist Alliance, said that “these elections are a manifestation of the class struggle between the Egyptian working class and the owners of capital.”
Shokr added that these elections “mark the beginning of the end for this official trade union structure. This union structure serves the interests of the ruling regime and the interests of capitalists. It does not represent the will or interests of the Egyptian working class.”
For his part, Osama Ghazali Harb, a former NDP chief and the founder of the (liberal) Democratic Front Party (under establishment,) announced ” Egypt needs strong and competitive trade unions within an active civil society.”
Harb also called for “trade union independence” and “the right to organize freely.”
Defying the State-Controlled Trade Union Monopoly
“Egypt’s trade unions are neither independent nor self-organized; they lack the right of arbitration and the right to strike. Without these rights a union is not a union at all, but rather a league, association, or a club” said Kamal Abbas, the Director of the CTUWS.
Regarding the indirect and unrepresentative elections for the 23 general trade union councils and the ETUF council, Abbas asked “Why should journalists and lawyers be allowed to elect their syndicate leaders while workers’ leaders are not elected, but rather state-appointed?”
Abbas also questioned the state’s reasoning as to why trade union plurality is forbidden in Egypt? “Aisha Abdel Hady had announced that: trade union plurality would lead to chaos, we want stability.”
Aisha Abdel Hady and ETUF President Hussein Megawer had both announced that union plurality would fragment, divide, and weaken the national union movement – this was also the stance of their predecessors Ahmad Amawi and Sayyed Rashid, respectively. Moreover, Abdel Hady and Megawer have threatened to take legal measures against anybody organizing parallel trade unions.
Abbas argued that “union plurality is the right of workers. It is OK to have only one trade union federation – if it is self-organized, democratic, and independent from the state, this is not the case in Egypt. In Germany there is one trade union federation, in the UK there is one trade union federation, while in France there are six federations and Morocco has four.” He said that trade union plurality in these latter cases had not resulted in chaos.
At the CTUWS conference a number of workers, who were barred from running in this year’s union elections, declared that they would join the competing and independent trade unions being established.
Mohammad Abu Samra, the former president of the Alexandria Port Workers’ Union, who was barred from running in these elections (along with 10 other opposition port workers), said “we filed a case against Aisha Abdel Hady and won, yet the court verdict was not implemented. We are thus going to join the Free Trade Union Federation that the opposition forces are establishing.
Leftist and Nasserist opposition forces are still discussing whether or not they want to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood in the establishment of a “Free Trade Union Federation.” Others are refusing Tagammu Party involvement – since this social democratic party is widely perceived as having “sold out” to the NDP.
Government Moves to Crush Free Students’ Unions; The Same Expected for Free Trade Unions?
Over the past few days the Ministry of Interior has ordered its plain-clothed thugs to storm Ain Shams University, amongst other universities, and to assault those belonging to the newly established (parallel) Free Students’ Union.
Journalists and photographers have captured numerous shots of these thugs with clubs, knives, and butchers’ cleavers. Other photos show Sammy Sedhom (one of the deputies to the Interior Minister Habib el-Adly) in the middle of these thugs. Last summer Sedhom had ordered the arrests of several student & youth activists demonstrating in solidarity with the demands of the Judges’ Club for judicial independence.
In light of the threats announced by the Labor Minister and the ETUF President, regarding the establishment of independent or parallel trade unions, one can expect a governmental crackdown against any attempts at organizing workers’ organizations outside the strict confines of the ETUF structure.
The freedom to organize trade unions is simultaneously an economic, social, civil and political right. The freedom to organize (or lack of) affects workers’ wages, working conditions, working hours, pensions, employment contracts, lay-offs, the right to strike, and the right to negotiate with the state (and/or employers) amongst a number of other work-related issues.
Despite of the fact that the Egyptian State has, on its own free will, chosen to ratify international labor and human rights conventions which stipulate workers’ organizational independence – the ruling regime will not grant Egyptian workers the freedom to organize independent unions. Therefore, perhaps this right/freedom must be seized?