There are conflicting reports surfing the web over the Monday Mahalla pro-Gaza protest. You will find a blog that says the protest never took place and it was a “rumor,” while there’s an Arabic report from the Spanish newswire agency that speaks of a silent march.
Neither are true. Labor organizers did mobilize for a demonstration, but it was aborted by the police. The workers started assembling inside the company around 3:30pm after the end of the first work shift, but came under the assault of the police, whose troops confiscated the banners that they had, and threatened a showdown, so the organizers decided to disband the protest around 4pm.
The estimates of those who assembled varied from 2000 to 5ooo. I hope when fellow journalists contact the organizers they know in the factory that they cross check their facts with more than one source.
Another misreporting is the currently circulated Egyptian Workers and Trade Unions Watch report that speaks of the establishment of the first independent labor union in Egypt outside the state-backed General Federation of Trade Union’s body, by the leaders of the Real Estate Tax Collectors’ Strike.
This report was circulated last month, and claimed the union was born on 18 February, and gave a detailed structure for it. I refused to post it then (and will not post it now), because it was wrong. The EWTUW’s reports in general are correct, and I post them here, but I always cross check what they say with other sources, and this report, again, was wrong. A meeting indeed took place on 18 Feb between the members and Higher Committee for the Real Estate Tax Collectors’ Strike on that day. The project to launch an independent union was discussed, and proposals were floated around, where basically the Higher Committee was to bypass the corrupt, state-backed union members and establish itself, rightfully, as the real representative of the 55,000 tax collectors, who went on a national strike last year and occupied downtown Cairo. The union was not announced that evening however, but a decision was taken to maintain the Higher Committee, which was founded last year to lead the strike, and not disband it following the victory… What the EWTUW did was that it took the proposal and published it, misreporting that it was an “announcement” not a “proposal.”
Yesterday the same report was posted on one of the labor blogs. But again, it is not true that the union has been born yet. Members of the Higher Committee have been giving statements saying “they will” lead that new fight to establish the union. They are still speaking in the future tense, and not the present tense. I know there are many who are impatient to see this, including myself, but we have to be accurate in our reporting. (I contacted the blogger who reposted the report and he indeed admitted it was a misunderstanding of some of Kamal Abu Eita’s latest statements, and he promised me to take it down.. and he did.) There is no doubt the Higher Committee is running the show now and have completely sidelined the govt-backed Federation officials. (What can be more of a humiliating proof for the latter than being not present during the final negotiations between the strike leaders and the Finance Minister? They were standing outside in the street suntanning, while the Higher Committee members were grilling the minister inside the building, and came out carried on the shoulders after the declaration of victory.) But this is one thing, and announcing a parallel labor union officially (which means an official declaration of war on the Federation) is another.
Also on the point of misreporting the industrial action in general: I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but I haven’t been linking to Al-Masry Al-Youm recently that much when it comes to labor coverage. That’s unfortunately because the paper is covering the issue too sensationally. Sometimes “sit-ins” are reported as “strikes,” on other occasions they inflated the numbers of the participant strikers or gave room for statements by labor activists who are known for their closeness to the media outlets more than they are to their base on the factory floor. The labor coverage of Ad-Dustour and El-Badeel however is much better.