The early buy-out packages negotiations reached a dead end yesterday with militant trade unionists representing Suez, Tora and Helwan Cement workers rightly raising the ceiling of their demands to discourage the Italian management from cutting down the labor force in the company, following the December strikes.

The Factory Union Committee officials, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm, deliberately gave the management a set of high-ceiling demands they knew would be refused. While union officials played a sabotaging, pro-govt role in most of the current strikes, there are cases where few independent Factory Union Committees took the side of the workers, including the above mentioned cement companies.