Workers for Change and the Tagammu Party are holding a public event, to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the heroic 1989 Helwan Steel Mills occupation, which was crushed by the police using live ammunition, resulting in the killing of one worker.
The event will take place on 20 August, 5:30pm, at the Tagammu office in Helwan, located at 24 Ragheb Street.
The Amanco workers’ strike has been suspended today due to pressures from the police and the management.
In the run up to the 6th of April, Ghazl el-Mahalla turned into a battleground of propaganda and agitation between the Textile Workers’ League activists on the one hand, and on the other were the management, security and the group of workers around Attar and Habib who were trying to sabotage the strike.
Each camp was distributing hundreds and thousands of statements in the week prior to the 6th of April. According to two labor organizers I spoke with, the militancy in the garments section, that is composed largely of women workers, was the highest. These were the same workers who started the 7th of December strike, as 3000 of them struck and started marching, chanting “Where are the men? Here we are the women!”
One of the strongest pro-strike statements, distributed in the factory, appeared a couple of days prior to the uprising, titled “The 6th of April: To be or not to be,” signed by “The Women Workers of Ghazl el-Mahalla,” who were close to the Textile Workers’ League.
The statement denounced PM Nazif, the National Democratic Party, the company security and the state-backed union officials, endorsing the call to strike:
