Kareem el-Beheiri’s reports on the visit of the NDP delegation to the striking Ghazl el-Mahalla factory.
The NDP delegation included Abdel Mohsen Abul Kheir, Abdel Hamid Noweir (the NDP secretary in the Gharbeia province), Gamal Shaheen (NDP Member of Shura Council) and Ezzat Derag (NDP MP).
The MPs, according to Kareem, were initially thought to be delegated by the president himself, which turned out to be untrue.
The NDP delegates asked to meet privately with the strike leaders at the Social Club, but this was vehemently rejected by the strikers, who started chanting, according to Kareem, “Get inside the company!” Pressured, the NDP delegates entered the company. Abdel Hamid Noweir started addressing the workers, telling them he was assigned by the ministerial cabinet in Cairo to solve the crisis, but started praising the NDP. That, reported Kareem, provoked the workers, who started shouting “Get to the subject!”
Noweir said some of the workers’ demands were “legal” but others were “illegal, and we live in a country ruled by the law.” Then he told the workers that the government is willing to pay only 40 days of the annual shares of profits (instead of the 150 days demanded by the workers), and that the workers had to wait till the company’s General Assembly is held to look into the rest of the demands. No date was given to when that General Assembly would convene, except “sometime after Eid.” The workers were infuriated, according to Kareem, and started chanting against the ministers and Noweir himself: “Get out! Get out! You are not even a government official (meaning he is not a minister or a presidential envoy)!”
Labor leaders Muhammad el-Attar and Sayyed Habib, according to Kareem, asked the NDP delegation why wouldn’t the figure go up to 90 days. So the NDP delegates replied back saying they were in Mahalla only to deliver a message and not negotiate. This triggered even angrier respose from the strikers, who insisted on expelling the NDP delegation from the factory. The delegation “escaped fearing their lives,” wrote Kareem.
The workers were also thrilled to hear about the news of solidarity coming from Alexandria and Cairo and, according to Kareem, this raised the morale tremendously.
But more worryingly, plainclothes security agents have infiltrated the factory and have taken positions, which is arousing the anxiety of the strikers about the possibility of a police assault.
Kareem is also reporting that the corrupt Factory Union Committee is working hard to sabotage the strike and is trying to collect signatures from workers saying they accept the government proposal. This move triggered denunciations and protests from the strikers, according to Kareem..
Here is a video Kareem took of the NDP delegation addressing the strikers… Listen to and watch the workers interrupting the speakers, chanting “Wahed! Etnein! Hosni Mubarak Fein?! (One! Two! Where is Hosni Mubarak?!)
My heart and thoughts go out to the Mahalla strikers.
