Category: Blog

Bon Voyage Gebali who will be investigated for corruption, and farewell to the rest of his cronies at the management board.

The General Assembly also decreed another 45 days from the annual profit shares, raising the total received by the workers to 135 days. The workers were originally demanding a minimum of 130 days.

There is euphoria in Mahalla among the workers, according to my labor sources, who feel very much empowered by Gebali’s overthrowal. The period that preceded the General Assembly was a time of psychological warfare between the management and the workers, with campaigns launched to convince the workers to drop the demand of impeaching Gebali and his cronies (fearing this could be replicated in other public sector companies). Statements and counterstatements were circulated on the factory floor, and there was talk of launching another strike soon if Gebali wasn’t impeached…

There are still issues that need to be addressed, specifically regarding the Factory Union Committee in Ghazl el-Mahalla… whether the right way to go about it is to continue pushing for its impeachment (and holding elections for a new committee within the structure of state-backed Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions), or start mobilizing for an alternative union inside the company. I have blogged before about how farce attempts to parachute a national union from the sky could be. There is a need however to start pushing for alternative associations or unions inside the companies that witnessed the strikes, one each, at the grassroots level, and there is no place more ready for this than Ghazl el-Mahalla, which spearheaded the anti-govt unions movement from the start.

The strike leaders of the December 2006 and the September 2007 are the LEGITIMATE representatives of the workers, not the corrupt Factory Union Committee officials who sided with the management and the police, and whose head, Seddiq Siyam, ended up in the hospital and resigned after the workers ate him alive in September. The Federation officials have tried to seduce the strike leaders throughout the summer with promises of “Representatives’ Committee” and “sidelining” the FUC officials, etc.. These turned out to be farce, together with the other promised economic demands. It had to take another strike in September to enforce the implementation of the June and July agreements.

At the moment, the strike leaders and a circle around them are the defacto union representatives… meaning if the police, govt, management, or the devil wants to send a message to the 27000 workers, or implement something, they seek the strike leaders to confer, consult, warn or threaten… The govt knows who runs the show on the factory floor… Last time they asked the FUC to intervene, the head as mentioned above ended up in the hospital.

There is a need however to start translating our victories into institutions.. meaning… the strike leaders have to decide soon among themselves and the factory floor, what’s to be done about the union question.

In my view the time is very much ripe to launch an alternative association in the factory that would enforce itself on the govt. But I also expect the govt if faced with this, will cow in at the last moment and impeach the FUC officials. The balance of forces then, coupled with the mood on the factory floor, how much intervention the radical left can make, the relations between the independent vs. the organized activists in the factory will then determine if Ghazl el-Mahalla will witness the birth of Egypt’s first independent labor union or not.