Tag: megawer

Settlement reached between govt and Mahalla strikers; work to resume Sunday

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received a statement from the Workers’ Coordination Committee.

According to the statement, a government delegation led by the head of the General Federation of Trade Unions Hussein Megawer, the head of the General Union of Textile Workers Said el-Gohary and the head of the Textile Holding Company Mohsen el-Gilani met with 20 strike leaders at the City Council. Negotiations started Friday 11:30pm, and ended on the morning of Saturday 2:15am, where the two parties agreed on the following:

1- Ninety days of the annual profit shares will be paid immediately to the workers. The rest will be determined by the General Assembly of the company, on condition that it will be no less than 130 days, and no ceiling was agreed up on. The workers had already received 20 days, so another 70 will be decreed (so from the initial 40 days offered by the management, the strikers raised it to 90 days instead.)

2-The strike days will be considered paid holidays, whose costs will be incurred by the Holding Company.

3- Instead of giving the management the right to determine the incentives, the latter will be a function of the basic monthly salary, with an annual increase of 7% of the basic salary.

4- A cooperative society is to be established, funded by the Holding Company, to provide for the transportation of workers. Labor leader Mostafa Fouda has been assigned to direct it.

5-No striker will be victimized for taking part in the industrial action. A committee from the strike leaders has been formed to continue negotiating with the Holding Company over increasing the allowances for food and industrial safety.

6-The strike leaders were promised that Mahmoud el-Gebaly, the corrupt company board chairman will be impeached, together with his assistants.

7-Work is to resume on Sunday.

VICTORY for Ghazl el-Mahalla workers

Posted on By 3arabawy

I finally managed to get hold of the negotiating team in the morning. MAHALLA DID IT AGAIN AND SCORED A GREAT VICTORY!

The labor leaders’ delegation, which was comprised of the central figures in the December ’06 strike (Muhammad el-Attar, Sayyed Habib, Gehad Taman, Abdel Qader el-Deeb, Faisal Naqousha, Magdi Sherif, Ibrahim el-Tantawi), forced the government (represented yesterday by Labor Ministry officials, Hussein Megawer the head of the General Federation) to submit to most of the workers’ demands:

1-The “Development Incentives” (hafez el-tatweer) were raised: This bonus system used to be divided into three categories: Production Workers used to receive LE50 a month, Assistant-Production workers used to get paid LE37, while the daily-waged workers (janitors, cleaners, guards) used to get LE25.
The workers forced the government to reduce those categories into two: a) Both the production and the assistant-production workers will receive LE50, while the daily-waged workers will receive LE37.

2-The annual raise will be set at at 7%, after fluctuating up and down in the previous years according to the management’s mood, while the monthly bonuses will be raised so as to range from 20 to 25% of the monthly salaries.

4-The outdated pricing index used by the govt to determine the cost of the raw materials and the units produced will be modified. (Since the production was underpriced by the govt, this used to affect the workers’ bonuses.)

5-The annual share of profits will be from two to four months this year. (Last year it was 45 days only.)

6-No details are available yet, but the workers also forced the govt to come up with a new transportation service system for the company workers. New mini-buses will be bought by the company to help transport the workers (who come from the neighboring provinces and towns) to the factory daily.

7-A minimum wage will be determined for the newly instated workers. “This is mainly for our sons in the future when they join the company,” one of the labor leaders told me. “They have to get this minimum protection, so as not to go what we, their fathers, have gone through.”

8-LAST BUT NOT LEAST, the December ’06 strike leaders have managed to sideline, if not crush, the corrupt Factory Union Committee officials who were the target of the impeachment campaign, once and for all. Though the govt insisted on its refusal to impeach the officials, fearing this will trigger a wave of impeachment in other factories (both in the textile sector and others), the govt has in effect recognized who is running the show on the ground… None of the Factory Union Committee officials were invited to the meeting. Moreover, Hussein Megawer is quoted by the negotiators to have said: “Forget about them (local union). From now on, if there is anything in the factory, we will speak to you directly. We understand you now represent the workers with legitimacy.” This is short of the impeachment of course… but it is still a step forward in the long battle against the regime-dominated unions.

“What we did on the 1st of July scared them a lot,” said one of the December ’06 strike leaders. “They (govt) showed so much flexibility yesterday, that we ourselves were surprised.”
The planned 21 July strike has been called off by the Ghazl el-Mahalla leaders. But what happened yesterday will have a ripple effect on the textile sector at least in this coming period. If the govt does not generalize some of the Mahalla gains on the rest of the workers, this can well renew the wave of industrial action in the textile sector. Let’s wait and see what the statements of the govt officials will be like in tomorrow’s papers. And let’s wait to see if there’ll be any movement in the Nile Delta factories in the coming days. Most probably the first response will come from Kafr el-Dawar, and that will show us what the pulse is like among the textile workers. And as for Ghazl el-Mahalla itself, judging from the mood on the ground, I can only expect what happened yesterday will open the workers’ appetite for more. This is just the beginning.

Mabrouk for the Mahalla workers, the vanguard of the Egyptian working class.

Ghazl el-Mahalla workers threaten sit-in

Posted on By 3arabawy

A 100-strong delegation of Mahalla textile workers is arriving in Cairo, today Sunday morning, 10am, to meet with the head of General Federation of Trade Unions, Hussein Megawer, for negotiations over their January demands, that include the improvement of working conditions as well as the impeachment of their corrupt Factory Union Committee, threatening to stage a sit-in at the Federation’s HQ, to be followed by a strike. Another delegation from Mahalla will be also sent to the Ministry of Social Affairs to denounce the closure of the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services, and to lobby for the factory workers’ demands.

One of the December strike leaders called me to say he and his colleagues are requesting solidarity from Kefaya and Cairo’s press corps.

PLEASE SHOW UP AT THE GENERAL FEDERATION’S HQ, 90 GALAA ST., (NEAREST UNDERGROUND METRO STATION: AHMAD ORABI) 10AM TO WELCOME THE MAHALLA WORKERS IN CAIRO AND TO EXPRESS YOUR SOLIDARITY WITH THEM.