A long report by Paul Schemm, on the current strike wave in Egypt and the opposition:
The largest wave of labor unrest to hit Egypt in the past half century could be more than just the birth pangs of a liberalising economy but also the mass movement needed to revitalise a flagging opposition.
Starting in 2004 and then picking up speed two years later, wildcat strikes have flared across the country, hitting everything from small food-processing factories to the massive state-owned textile firms.
“There are contradictory developments going on. On one level, you can say that the tide is receding and the (opposition) movement is subsiding,” said Wael Khalil of Kefaya, a loosely organized protest movement that appeared on the scene two years ago but has since lost much of its momentum.
“At the same time, the level of discontent is higher than before, and not only the workers,” he said, noting that while Kefaya’s urban protests have been easily crushed, the government has been quick to respond to workers’ demands.
“The thing about the workers movement is how frightened the government is — it is really a demonstration of how a mass movement can bring about change,” he said.
For every single strike over the past few months, government agencies have been quick to negotiate with the workers and grant their demands, which have generally been for unpaid bonuses, benefits and salaries.
“The government has the money to pay it because the price of oil is high and they’ve sold off a bunch more public sector enterprises,” explained Joel Beinin, the head of the Middle East Studies department at the American University in Cairo and a long time observer of Egypt’s labor scene.
“This is the biggest, longest strike wave at least since the fall of 1951,” he added. “Just in terms of the size of what we are talking about, it is substantially different from what we’ve had before.”
In his writings, Beinin has described the strikes as “the most substantial and broad-based kind of resistance to the regime.”
In 2006 alone, the independent daily Al-Masri Al-Youm counted 222 instances of labor unrest, including a week-long strike at the massive spinning and weaving complex at Mahalla al-Kobra north of Cairo involving some 20,000 workers.
The trend has continued in 2007 with daily reports of strikes.
There are indications, however, that the government has become fed up with these protests and sit-ins, and Labour Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi has suggested that rabble rousers are behind the wave.
“This situation has gone on long enough — we are working to solve the problems of the workers, but there are those who want to ignite a revolution,” she said on television mid-April.
Government ire has recently focused on labor NGOs like the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS), which they have publicly accused of fomenting the strikes.
In April, the organization’s offices were closed down in the southern town of Nag Hammadi, the northern industrial complex of Mahalla, and on Wednesday police dragged activists out of their headquarters in Cairo’s gritty industrial suburb of Helwan.
“Closing the offices of a labor rights group won’t end labor unrest,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Director of the Human Rights Watch.
“The government should be upholding legal commitments to Egypt’s workers instead of seeking a scapegoat.”