Tag: giza

Sit-ins, strikes in Nile Delta, Giza, Cairo

Posted on By 3arabawy

Frustration is spreading once again among the rank and file of Railways workers, with the train drivers threatening industrial action if the government does not introduce compensations for the hazards and risks they face in their job. Al-Masry Al-Youm reported today that the drivers are threatening a national strike on Tuesday. When I checked with a Socialist source, however, he said the report was an “exaggeration. There’s a meeting for the Association of Railways Drivers on 25 April to see how to take the campaign forward. I do not think there will be any action taken before that. But sure there is a militant mood among the drivers.”

Last January, around 700 drivers went on strike in Cairo, blocking the first-class Torbini train to Alexandria for a day. Underground Metro drivers in solidarity slowed down their trains from 90km/h to 30 km/h. The drivers threatened a national strike, in the week to follow, which was averted by the government’s response to some of the strikers’ demands.

[Above: Photo I received of the train drivers on strike last January]

In Giza, garbage contractors and workers stormed their company in Omraneya yesterday, destroyed the front windows and the cars parked outside, protesting the decree of the newly-instated company manager not to pay them their March salaries.

In the Nile Delta province of Menoufiya, 2700 textile workers are continuing their sit-in for the fifth day on the row at the privately-owned Abul Makarem Textile Industries company, located in Sadat’s industrial zone.

I spoke with 52-year-old Abdel Moneim, a production worker who’s taking part in the sit-in:

-The company is privately owned, established by businessman Hassan Abul Makarem in 1984.

-Claiming the company was going through financial hardships, the management have refused to pay the workers their annual Labor Day grant since 1999. They were not paid their salaries during the three months of Nov, Dec 2004 and Jan 2005. No raises were paid from 2002 to 2007.

-The basic salaries in the factory range between LE180 to LE400 a month, according to Abdel Moneim.

-Five banks, including the Industrial Development Bank, have reached a deal with Abul Makarem (don’t have the exact date), whereby more than LE50 millions were pumped into the company, and a good percentage of the company’s debts were dropped.

“We excused Abul Makarem when there were financial troubles,” said Abdel Moneim. “We built this company and consider it our home. But now we can’t sacrifice more. We need to eat. And there’s money and raw materials coming into the factory now. We want our rights. The Public Sector companies received their bonuses from the government. We are just asking for our salaries.”

-Abul Makarem, using his security connections, filed a lawsuit against 20 workers in the factory, threatening to sack them. There are security forces, deployed around the factory, but no threats of breaking the sit-in have been uttered up till now.

-The Factory Union Committee in the company, according to Abdel Moneim, is in bed with the management. The workers have started collecting signatures to impeach it.

-The engineers in the factory are not part of the industrial action. They receive better treatment and higher salaries, according to Abdel Moneim. [I heard this remark from other textile strikers in Kafr el-Dawar and Mahalla… I don’t know why, but I keep reminded of the role those engineers’ counterparts in Iran played in destroying the Iranian workers’ Shura councils formed in the earlier stages of the 1979 Iranian revolution as an embryonic form of soviets. While it’s ridiculous to start speculating, at the moment, about how will the factory engineers behave in a future workers’ revolution in Egypt, we have to be cautious and on the alert for what they’ll do.]

DSE on grain mills workers

Posted on By 3arabawy

A report by the Daily Star Egypt on the struggle of the grain mills workers in Cairo and Giza:

Strikes by flourmill workers ended Monday following a meeting that brought together union representatives from Cairo and Giza flourmills companies, and three cabinet ministers.
Magdy Abdel Azim, deputy head of the Union Committee of the North Cairo flour mills told The Daily Star Egypt that the workers were satisfied with the decision of Minister of Social Solidarity Ali Al-Moselhi, Minister of Labor Aicha Abdel Hady and Investment Minister Mahmoud Moheiddin to freeze a decree by Al-Moselhi that would have cut workers’ monthly bonuses by 35 percent.
Over 5,000 workers at the North Cairo and South Cairo and Giza Flourmills had gone on strike last Thursday to protest Al-Moselhi’s decision to reduce the daily quota of wheat allocated to the North Cairo Mill by 429 tons and the quota to the South Cairo and Giza Flourmills by 413 tons.
“These cuts,” said Adel Azim, “threatened the very existence of our mills for the benefit of the private sector. They would have minimized our role in distributing the flour, not milling it.”
Workers’ bonuses, he continued, are tied to the mills’ production rate. The decision would have cost the workers two thirds of their salaries as well as their annual profit shares.
According to the daily Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper, the mill workers had temporarily ended the strike Friday night after promises by Secretary-General of the General Federation of Trade Unions Hussein Megawer that their demands will be met by Monday at the latest, when the issue was to be discussed at the People’s Assembly.
When nothing was done, the workers resumed the strike, raising the specter of a bread crisis in Cairo and Giza.

One correction though: the report states the workers were on strike. Actually, they were not. They staged sit-ins and marched inside the factory compound chanting anti-government slogans, but production still went on. This scared the government enough into submitting to the workers’ demands, especially when the company has branches in 14 provinces (including Cairo and Giza); the workers in the provinces were waiting to see how the govt will handle the negotiations and there were signs the sit-ins may spread to other branches, namely to Minya.

Grain Mills workers score victory; 4000 Alexandrian textile workers on strike

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received news that the government has yielded to the Grain Mills workers’ demands in Giza and Cairo. Frightened by the 9000-strong sit-in and a looming strike, the regime agreed not to cut down the supply of wheat to the company, and revoked its earlier decision to divert part of the supply to privately-owned firms–a move that would have cut down production in the company’s grain mills, decreased workers’ bonuses, signalling the gradual liquidation of the public company.

In other developments, 4,000 textile workers in Alexandria’s state-owned United Arab Bolivara Spinning and Weaving Silk Company resumed their strike yesterday, denouncing the management’s decision to deduct the five days of production stoppage, during last month’s strike, out of the workers’ monthly salaries. I’m told by a Socialist journalist that the strike was suspended last night, but no more details available yet.

Meanwhile, the closure of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services branch in Naga’a Hammadi continues, as the government accuses its directors of being “communists who spread the culture of strikes.”