Tag: left

Govt crackdown on Mahalla labor activists

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received a very worrying statement from Kamal Abbas of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services… After cracking down on the Center’s branch in Naga’a Hammadi, accusing its directors of “communism” and “spreading the culture of strikes,” the Ministry of Social Security sent a senior official on Tuesday evening to the Center’s branch in Mahalla and threatened to close it down, according to Kamal.

“It’s the same scenario of Naga’a Hammadi, being repeated again in Mahalla,” Kamal told me. “A wave of security crackdowns on the labor movement is to be expected.”

The Hisham Mubarak Law Center called for a meeting this Thursday 5pm, where activists will be discussing a solidarity campaign with the CTUWS. The center is located at: 1 Souq el-Tawfiqiya St., off Ramses Street.

Resisting our rulers

Posted on By 3arabawy

The 5th Cairo Anti-War Conference’s final statement is available in Arabic.

And here’s a report about the Conference from the Guardian’s Comment is Free:

The rich and powerful have their conferences and we who oppose them have ours. For example, some very rich and powerful characters were meeting in Saudi Arabia last week.
But as the tyrants met in Riyadh, delegates from 17 different countries gathered in Egypt for the Fifth International Cairo Conference incorporating the Third Middle Eastern Social Forum under the slogan: “Building an international coalition for resistance” – resistance against colonialism, globalisation, imperialism and Zionism.
There was a lot to discuss: the catastrophe of Iraq, the clear build-up against Iran, the on-going agony of the Palestinian people and the almost universal despotism which characterises the Middle East.
The conference met in a country on the brink of revolt. Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt as a police state for over 26 years, has recently increased his people’s suffering. Last December he announced changes in the constitution to “rid Egypt of socialist principles launched in the 1960s (and) also seek to create a more favorable atmosphere for foreign investments”.
This was the usual neo-liberal bullshit for slashing wages and forcing people to work harder. The workers resisted with massive strikes. Some 20,000 mobilized to defend their bonuses at the Ghazl el-Mahal factory in Mahalla el-Kubra, north of Cairo, 8,000 at Kafr al-Dawwar factory did the same, followed by similar strikes at Zifta and Shibin al-Kum in Alexandria.

No to Mubarak لا لمبارك

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.”