Tag: daqahliya

Labor Updates

Posted on By 3arabawy

There were 10 sit-ins, seven strikes and three demonstrations by Egyptian workers during March 2007, a report by Awlad el-Ard NGO says.

Meanwhile, 600 teachers and members of staff staged a sit-in yesterday in the Nile Delta town of Zagazig, to protest the abusive treatment by their bosses at the Muslim Youth schools.

In Cairo, 200 workers at Al-Arabiya brick-making factory are continuing their sit-in for the fourth day, to protest the liquidation of the company. Some workers have started a hunger strike; three were transferred to the hospital yesterday: Hanafi el-Sayyed, Mohamed Bashir, Zakaria Ahmad Khalil. The Ministry of Labor is busy organizing the May Day presidential ass-kissing carnival, and refuses to intervene.

In Dakahlya, 280 workers at Mansoura-España garments factory are threatening to stage a sit-in on 28 April–which will be the third industrial action they take in two months–to protest the delay in paying their salaries, and bonuses promised by the Ministry of Labor.

MB students dismissed from Mansoura University

Posted on By 3arabawy

From Ikhwan Web:

Mansoura University dismissed 33 students from various faculties for a full month after investigating with them for performing the theatrical show “Congratulations on the son”.
The 33 students were referred to an investigating committee on charges of presenting last week a theatrical performance about the current events in Egypt, as part of a campaign launched by the university students demanding usurped freedoms and rejecting the hereditary transfer of power.

Textile strikes continue

Posted on By 3arabawy

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that 270 textile workers at Mansoura-España garments factory have started their second strike in less than one month.

The workers are demanding, according to the paper, their unpaid February salary, their “social raises” which have not been paid since 1995 (Jeeez!!), and their Labor Day grants which the management stopped paying since 2002!!!

There is strong female presence in the garments’ factories labor force in general. It’s heart warming for me to find out not only thousands of them are taking part in the strike movement, but also (according to the interviews I conducted in Mahalla, Kafr el-Dawar, and chats I had with labor activists in Cairo) the female workers have tended to be more militant than their male colleagues.

In the case of Ghazl el-Mahalla December strike for example three thousand female workers from the garments factory stormed other sections of the company that had male colleagues who haven’t gone on strike yet, and started chanting “El-regalla fein?! el-hareem ahom!” (Here are the women! So where are the men?!) Their colleagues, feeling ashamed, joined the strike.

I wonder if the plight and the resistance of the female garments workers are ever discussed by those posh feminists of Suzan Mubarak’s National Council for Women.