I co-authored an article with Joel Beinin for MERIP on the recent wave of labor strikes in the textile sector, and the prospects of political change in Egypt.
Tag: mahalla
Textile strikes continue
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.
6000 Ghazl el-Mahalla workers resign from General Federation
I visited el-Mahalla el-Kobra on Friday.
Two of the December Ghazl el-Mahalla strike leaders told me that up till now around 6,000 workers have resigned from the government-controlled General Federation of Trade Unions, after the latter’s refusal to impeach the Factory Union Committee. At least 56 resignations a day are sent to the Federation, by registered mail (costing each worker LE2.5 per letter, according to the two labor activists; a huge sum for the workers there believe it or not!).