“We (the teachers) have become proletariat el-ta’aleem (the education proletariat),” said N Sinai teacher and left wing activist Ashraf Ayoub in the meeting that followed Saturday’s protest. “Are we different from the workers? No. The government treats us in the same way. We are exploited and oppressed… We need to mobilize for a national conference for teachers in Egypt and overthrow the (state-backed) syndicate.”
Year: 2008
“If we don’t build the union, our gains will be taken away. We still have more rights to win”
Kamal Abu Eita, addressing other members of the Higher Committee for the Real Estate Tax Collectors’ Strike who convened in Cairo on Saturday, to carry on their fight to build what will be Egypt’s first independent labor union in half a century.
‘We have to strike’
“We need to know one another, and who’s doing what in each province.” said Na’eem Ramadan, an Arabic teacher from Dessouq, in the northern Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheik. “We can’t stay fragmented… We have to strike. The people (teachers) have reached their limits and cannot take it anymore. Before Kefaya, no one used to demonstrate in the streets. It’s different now. But we will not be able to do anything unless we unite ourselves. In Dessouq, we are staging a sit-in 20 September, on the first day of classes. We are not going to our schools. We will go to the Teachers’ Syndicate Club in Dessouq and assemble there. Other provinces need to do the same.”
