Once again, the militancy of the base cadres outdid that of their leaders.
Ghazl el-Mahalla workers rejected a compromise offered by the General Union on Wednesday– and initially accepted by a group of the December strike leaders–insisting on continuing the campaign to impeach their corrupt local union officials.
Ghazl el-Mahalla labor leaders arrived in the General Union of Textile Workers, on Wednesday morning for negotiations with the union bureaucrats. In the previous days, I was told, the General Federation of Trade Unions bureaucrats have been floating the idea of offering the Ghazl el-Mahalla workers the right to establish a “Representatives’ Committee” that will work side by side with the current Factory Union Committee the workers were trying to impeach.
The Representatives’ Committee was to include 105 (or 106–I heard the two figures) workers, elected from the floor shops, and was to have a power equal to that of the Factory Union Committee. The Federation was adamant about the impeachment proposal, fearing it could trigger a wave of impeachment proposals in other factories, and in other sectors. The Federation implied to the workers, I was told by an activist who attended the meeting, that the Factory Union Committee was to be “marginalized,” and that the Representatives’ Committee was to have “more say in how things are run in the factory.”
The labor leaders who arrived at the General Union, I was told by one of the December strike leaders, seemed to have accepted the compromise, and considered it a gain. (Even the Workers Coordination Committee’s initial statement I received, celebrated this as a victory. Also Socialist activists I spoke to on Wednesday afternoon, still considered it a “partial gain.”) However, Ghazl el-Mahalla workers’ militancy has outdone everybody’s… THE PROPOSALS WERE REJECTED BY THE FACTORY WORKERS, WHO INSISTED ON THE IMPEACHMENT OF THEIR FACTORY UNION COMMITTEE OFFICIALS.
“The news of the compromise had reached Mahalla already, over the mobile phones, as (the labor leaders) were heading back from Cairo in the buses,” one of the December strike leaders told me Thursday. “The workers at the factory said ahha (note: ahha is Egyptian colloquial for ‘screw this shit’). When they arrived in the factory, and each went to his floor shop and told the rest of what happened, there were angry shouts. The proposal was rejected.”
I asked the labor activist about what was the next step. He assured me the campaign to impeach the Factory Union Committee and the withdrawal from the govt-dominated General Federation of Trade Unions was still on, but did not provide me with details. “The mass resignations are ready. We will not pay a piaster to the Federation at the end of this month. We are out of it,” he said. “The government has to know what happened in December is nothing compared to what’s coming.”
Keep your eyes on Mahalla, dear readers. I assure you there are some fantastic developments in the making.
In other developments, more than 13,000 workers went on strike, 6am Thursday, at Samanoud Textile Factory, according to a statement I received from the Workers’ Coordination Committee, demanding the increase of their monthly food allowance to LE43, as decreed by the Labor Minister following the Kafr el-Dawar Textile strike.
The management of the company tried to avoid giving the workers the same treatment as their brethren at Kafr el-Dawar, claiming the Samanoud Textile company was not public, but private, sector. The workers accused the bosses of lying, as the private sector owns only 22% of the company’s shares, according to the Workers’ Coordination Committee.
The negotiations between the strikers on the one hand, and the management and State Security agents on the other hand, lasted for only two hours, after which the management succumbed to the workers’ demand. The strike was suspended, and work at the factory resumed at 8:30am.
And on the same day, 1900 textile workers went on strike in Ghazl Mit Ghamr company, protesting the witch-hunting campaign launched by the company’s manager Muhammad Abdel Ra’ouf Abdrabbo, who referred 17 workers to administrative disciplinary panels, accusing them of inciting their colleagues to go on strike. The workers had tried to go on strike last week, but suspended the attempt following threates from State Security agents coupled with a promise of a 30-day bonus by the management. (On pay day the management tried to pass this 30-day bonus as a “loan,” but retreated under workers’ pressure.)
The workers, according to the Workers’ Coordination Committee, are demanding the following:
-A halt to the withchunting by the management and revoking any punitive measures against the 17 workers
-Revoking the decision to transfer two labor activists to demoted positions
-Freezing the management board of the local branch of the union which has failed to represent the workers, and electing a new board to run factory union committee
-The non-renewal of the contracts of the company “consultants,” whose salaries are exponential, despite “their failure to provide anything to modernize the factory,” according to the statement I received from the workers coordination committee
-The return of the transportation service that used to be provided by the company, which helped the workers reaching their factory from the villages of Meit Ya’ish, Meit el-Ezz, Meit el-Faramawi, Barhamtoush
-Improving the medical care, which has been subject to austerity measures: There is not a single ambulance in the factory. The factory’s pharmacy is short of supplies.
