Frustration is spreading once again among the rank and file of Railways workers, with the train drivers threatening industrial action if the government does not introduce compensations for the hazards and risks they face in their job. Al-Masry Al-Youm reported today that the drivers are threatening a national strike on Tuesday. When I checked with a Socialist source, however, he said the report was an “exaggeration. There’s a meeting for the Association of Railways Drivers on 25 April to see how to take the campaign forward. I do not think there will be any action taken before that. But sure there is a militant mood among the drivers.”
Last January, around 700 drivers went on strike in Cairo, blocking the first-class Torbini train to Alexandria for a day. Underground Metro drivers in solidarity slowed down their trains from 90km/h to 30 km/h. The drivers threatened a national strike, in the week to follow, which was averted by the government’s response to some of the strikers’ demands.
[Above: Photo I received of the train drivers on strike last January]
In Giza, garbage contractors and workers stormed their company in Omraneya yesterday, destroyed the front windows and the cars parked outside, protesting the decree of the newly-instated company manager not to pay them their March salaries.
In the Nile Delta province of Menoufiya, 2700 textile workers are continuing their sit-in for the fifth day on the row at the privately-owned Abul Makarem Textile Industries company, located in Sadat’s industrial zone.
I spoke with 52-year-old Abdel Moneim, a production worker who’s taking part in the sit-in:
-The company is privately owned, established by businessman Hassan Abul Makarem in 1984.
-Claiming the company was going through financial hardships, the management have refused to pay the workers their annual Labor Day grant since 1999. They were not paid their salaries during the three months of Nov, Dec 2004 and Jan 2005. No raises were paid from 2002 to 2007.
-The basic salaries in the factory range between LE180 to LE400 a month, according to Abdel Moneim.
-Five banks, including the Industrial Development Bank, have reached a deal with Abul Makarem (don’t have the exact date), whereby more than LE50 millions were pumped into the company, and a good percentage of the company’s debts were dropped.
“We excused Abul Makarem when there were financial troubles,” said Abdel Moneim. “We built this company and consider it our home. But now we can’t sacrifice more. We need to eat. And there’s money and raw materials coming into the factory now. We want our rights. The Public Sector companies received their bonuses from the government. We are just asking for our salaries.”
-Abul Makarem, using his security connections, filed a lawsuit against 20 workers in the factory, threatening to sack them. There are security forces, deployed around the factory, but no threats of breaking the sit-in have been uttered up till now.
-The Factory Union Committee in the company, according to Abdel Moneim, is in bed with the management. The workers have started collecting signatures to impeach it.
-The engineers in the factory are not part of the industrial action. They receive better treatment and higher salaries, according to Abdel Moneim. [I heard this remark from other textile strikers in Kafr el-Dawar and Mahalla… I don’t know why, but I keep reminded of the role those engineers’ counterparts in Iran played in destroying the Iranian workers’ Shura councils formed in the earlier stages of the 1979 Iranian revolution as an embryonic form of soviets. While it’s ridiculous to start speculating, at the moment, about how will the factory engineers behave in a future workers’ revolution in Egypt, we have to be cautious and on the alert for what they’ll do.]