A good feature by AP journalist and friend Paul Schemm:
Workers banged drums at a sit-in rally and waved pay stubs for wages as low as US$40 a month amid soaring inflation, shouting that they cannot feed their children. Women workers rattled off the increasing prices they pay in their daily shopping.
The government rushed Saturday to resolve a weeklong strike at Egypt’s largest textile mill, a sign of authorities’ worries over the biggest wave of labor unrest the country has seen for decades.
But the underlying causes of the series of strikes over the past year remain: The poor feel squeezed out of Egypt’s liberalizing economy.
“What is meat, what does it look like? I haven’t seen meat for months,” said one of the many female workers participating in the strike by 27,000 employees at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Factory in the gritty industrial city of Mahalla el-Kobra. She gave her name only as Aida, fearing harassment by police.
“Look how thin he is, he doesn’t eat any meat,” said another woman pushing forward her frail 7-year-old child, who looked much younger. “Look at his clothes, he looks like a beggar,” she said, adding clothes and school books to the list of items increasingly beyond her reach.
The World Bank on Wednesday ranked Egypt has the world’s most improved economy for investors in 2007 thanks to the new government’s wide-ranging economic reforms. The country has seen an average growth rate of 7 percent for last three years, double what it was previously.
But even government officials have acknowledged in recent months that the improving economy has not trickled down to the majority of people in this country of nearly 77 million. Inflation soared to 12 percent since December, up from a low of 3.4 percent just a year before. Though the government says it fell to 8 percent last month, independent economists put the real rate at about twice that.
The result has been the biggest wave of strikes since the 1950s, said Joel Benin, the head of the Middle East Studies department at the American University in Cairo. At least 200 instances of labor unrest took place in 2006, according to the Center for Trade and Union Services, a pro-labor non-governmental organization.
With most of the population apathetic and the opposition fragmented, Egypt’s hundreds of thousands of public sector workers are an organized and motivated group that if aroused could pose an even greater threat to stability than traditional political rivals like the Muslim Brotherhood.
“It seems like the decision is to pacify the workers and give them what they want and crack down on the intellectuals and not give them anything,” Benin said. “The workers are more of a threat.”
The government and the striking workers in Mahalla el-Kobra announced a deal Saturday ending the strike after officials agreed to demands for three months worth of profit-sharing bonuses. But that may not be the end of it. The Mahalla workers struck in December for similar reasons, and even after that was resolved, a series of other factories launched their own walkouts.
“It’s going to cost them more than what they (the government) are just giving the Mahalla workers,” Benin said, suggesting other workers will follow suit again.
So far the government has taken a relatively soft hand toward the workers, generally holding back from security crackdowns on their noisy protests and giving in to at least some demands. That’s a sharp contrast to the reaction to most political protests, which are often heavily put down by security forces.
“They are afraid that a violent crackdown as they did in the past would increase tension in Egyptian society,” said Kamal Abbas of the Center for Trade and Union Services. “They also don’t want to look bad to international investors and need to show they are containing the situation.”
But the government shut down CTUS in April, accusing it of fomenting labor unrest. It has also accused the Muslim Brotherhood and other political parties of pushing the workers to strike to cause instability, an accusation the groups deny.
As do the workers. “No political groups are involved,” said Gihad Taman, one of the leaders of the past week’s strike in Mahalla.
“What sparked the latest strike is the increase in prices a month after the first strike (in December),” he said. “The workers have no other goals than to just earn a living and feed their children. We tell the government, ‘Take what you what, just give me and my family the essentials of life _ food, shelter and an education.'”
During the strike, thousands of the workers gathered for days in a sit-in, beating plastic barrels like drums and shouting slogans. The women workers expertly listed the price increases for basic staples over the last few months, with a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of pasta alone doubling in price to 4 Egyptian pounds (70 U.S. cents).
Ibrhaim Zeidan, 29, a 10-year veteran of the factory, showed his monthly pay stub showing his take home pay of 242 Egyptian pounds (US$43, 30). Like many of his co-workers, he has taken a second job to make ends meet.
“We all work outside. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t eat,” he said.