A poster celebrating the martyr Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the spiritual founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), on the wall of a mosque in el-‘Edwa, the Upper Egyptian province of el-Minya.
Tag: minya
Minya Nile Cotton workers end strike
Sarah Carr reports:
Employees of a cotton ginning factory in Minya ended a strike they began at the end of July after company management agreed to their demands.
The roughly 1,000 workers of the Nile Cotton Ginning Company began the strike on July 28, when they went to collect their salaries and discovered that management had failed to pay what they regard as their financial entitlements.
“We were promised a 15 percent raise instead of the 30 percent raise given to all workers in May, as well as the 7 percent increase we are entitled to,” a worker in the Minya factory who requested anonymity told Daily News Egypt last week.
“An executive board decision 16 of 2008 maintained the 7 percent increase but reduced the 15 percent raise — which has already been reduced from 30 percent — to 10 percent.
“We started our strike on July 28, when we went to collect our pay and discovered that they had cut what we are entitled to. A 2003 law states that financial incentives must be distributed yearly and that financial incentives are calculated on the basis of salaries after annual increases, but [deputy director of Nile Cotton] El-Sayyed El-Seify doesn’t want to do this,” the worker continued.
During the strike workers refused to collect their pay and closed the factory.
Privatized in 1997, Nile Cotton has factories both in the governorate of Minya and in several locations in the Delta.
Nile Cotton Ginning Company workers end strike on condition that demands be discussed
Sarah Carr reports:
Workers from the Nile Cotton Ginning Company Thursday called off a strike they began in protest at the decision of company management not to pay bonuses to which workers claim they are entitled.
Workers ended the strike when they received a promise that a meeting of People’s Assembly representatives from the Gharbeia governorate and government representatives will be convened to discuss workers’ demands on Aug. 10.
The Nile Company, which was privatized in 1997, has factories in the governorates of Gharbeia and Minya.
Some 1,000 workers are employed in the Minya factory.
“Workers’ basic pay is between LE 270 and LE 450 per month,” a worker from Nile Company’s Mahalla factory, who has been employed there for 22 years and who preferred to remain anonymous, told Daily News Egypt.
“When they privatized the factory we carried on working but we cannot stay silent when they interfere with our basic entitlements,” he continued.
Workers say that company management has refused to pay them a 10 percent salary increase laid down in a 2003 law, as well as another seven percent pay increase.
The Masrawy website quotes Nile Company worker Abdallah Muhammad as saying that “this factory used to produce gold, but that’s been turned to ruins by the administration which doesn’t care about anything apart from paying its debts.”
Muhammad alleges that the company’s administration is gradually dissembling the cotton ginning machines and using factory assets to take out loans.
He says that this allows banks to take control of these assets, sell them and divide up the land on which the factories are located.
Source in the Mahalla factory confirmed this report.
“The investors who bought the company have no background in cotton and are not interested in it in the first place,” he said.
“Their interest is the land on which the factories stand, which is in a prime location and extremely expensive — it can reach between LE 10,000 and LE 15,000 per square meter,” he continued.