Police is trying to smash the Bani Sweif Cement workers strike, detaining three workers and tearing down the tents set up by the strikers.

And in Cairo, the public prosecutor has ordered 10 protesters (five farmers, three auto workers and two students) to remain in police custody for 15 days, following their arrest last Wednesday during their sit ins in downtown Cairo.

The workers are holding a press conference at their company in Tora, today Wednesday 10am.

Workers at the Tora Cement plant have reached an agreement regarding one of their demands concerning pay and conditions after staging a protest Monday.
Some 200 workers had assembled in the factory on Monday morning.
Shabaan Ezzat, a trade union member, told Daily News Egypt that the Tora Cement company — owned by the Italcementi group since 2005 — had failed to renew an agreement organizing employment relations.
“There was an agreement in force which ended on Dec. 31, 2008. A new agreement should be put in place,” Ezzat said.
“The agreement organizes relations between them [company management] and us: it describes our rights and their obligations. It should have been renewed on Jan. 1, 2009 but they have postponed this until June,” Ezzat continued.
Workers were also demanding that their paid leave entitlement be calculated on the basis of total salaries.
“Over the course of the past six months new demands emerged. We want holiday entitlements to be based on our total salary including bonus payments. But they say no — holiday entitlements are calculated without bonus payments,” Ezzat explained.
According to Ezzat, company management agreed to this demand on Monday afternoon.
Management has not however shifted its position regarding the agreement governing labor relations — it will not be renewed earlier than June.
Workers also say that the Tora Cement company employs around 400 non-permanent workers on contract.
Union member Ali El-Shafei alleged that this policy is adopted so that the company “does not have to pay for their benefits.”
The Tora Cement company could not be reached for comment.
In December 2006 over 1,000 Tora Cement workers launched a successful strike after company management refused to pay them a bonus.
Several labor leaders launched a hunger strike during the action, including Ezzat.
“We are used to company management not responding to our demands, despite the fact that we point out to them what the law says and don’t ask for anything other than what we are legally entitled to,” Ezzat said.
“We’ve been in discussions with them for a month and a half now and nothing has changed…Management only responds to workers’ demands when we take a stance like this, when we stage protests. Otherwise they ignore us completely,” he continued.

No more details are available at the moment.

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.

Instead the workers want to buy the shares of the foreign management, and are proposing they (the workers) run the company themselves, promising to bring down the cement market price from LE400 per ton (expected to rise soon to LE600) to LE200.

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.]