The food processing workers sit-in enters its third day in Suez, despite security intimidation, while in Cairo the head of the regime-controlled General Union of Transportation Workers Wagih Mustafa Amin accused “Kefaya elements” of standing behind the latest public transportation strike.
Category: Blog
Cement workers stage sit-in south of Cairo
More than 500 workers at el-Qawmiya Cement Company in Helwan staged a sit-in Sunday morning, in front of the office building of the CEO Nabil el-Gabri, demanding their full annual bonuses.
The workers were entitled to a total profit share of LE30 millions (roughly 10% of the LE306 million profits made by the company the previous year). In addition to the cash sums, part of this money should be allocated to the housing and social services. The management only paid LE13 millions, triggering industrial action from the workers today. The Factory Union Committee apparently lobbied for only another LE7 millions, which was refused by the workers, who demanded the full remaining LE13 millions.
The director of the Helwan State Security Bureau Officer Ashraf Shura showed up at the factory in person, and negotiated with the workers. The sit-in was disbanded around 5pm, after Shura promised the workers their demands will be met. The workers also chanted against their Factory Union Committee officials, calling for their impeachment.
[Above: An undated photo of the director of Helwan’s State Security bureau Officer Ashraf Shura, seen above in brown plainclothes. He was involved in torturing labor writer Mostafa Bassiouny, by beatings and electric shocks in 1999. Photo courtesy of Egyptian blogger Ahmad Abdel Fattah.]
3 killed in building collapse in Cairo working class neighborhood
More disasters in the working class neighborhood of Sayyeda Zeinab, the constituency of Fathi Surrur, the NDP parliament speaker:
CAIRO, May 6 (Reuters) – Three people were killed on Sunday when a 4-storey apartment building collapsed in a poor neighborhood of Cairo, security sources said.
They said two bodies had been pulled from the rubble, and authorities were working to recover the body of a third person from beneath the wreckage in the working class Sayyeda Zeinab neighborhood. Building collapses are a frequent hazard in poor parts of Egypt because of lax building standards and poor maintenance.