Sarah Carr reports:
Employees of a cotton ginning factory in Minya ended a strike they began at the end of July after company management agreed to their demands.
The roughly 1,000 workers of the Nile Cotton Ginning Company began the strike on July 28, when they went to collect their salaries and discovered that management had failed to pay what they regard as their financial entitlements.
“We were promised a 15 percent raise instead of the 30 percent raise given to all workers in May, as well as the 7 percent increase we are entitled to,” a worker in the Minya factory who requested anonymity told Daily News Egypt last week.
“An executive board decision 16 of 2008 maintained the 7 percent increase but reduced the 15 percent raise — which has already been reduced from 30 percent — to 10 percent.
“We started our strike on July 28, when we went to collect our pay and discovered that they had cut what we are entitled to. A 2003 law states that financial incentives must be distributed yearly and that financial incentives are calculated on the basis of salaries after annual increases, but [deputy director of Nile Cotton] El-Sayyed El-Seify doesn’t want to do this,” the worker continued.
During the strike workers refused to collect their pay and closed the factory.
Privatized in 1997, Nile Cotton has factories both in the governorate of Minya and in several locations in the Delta.