Tag: protests

Canal workers continue third day of protest

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports…

Workers in Ismailia on Wednesday continued a third day of protest against what they allege are government plans to close down the Canal Company for Ports and Large Projects.

Established in 1965, the company employs 2,000 people and undertakes sewage, electricity and infrastructure projects in the Suez Canal area.

Ashraf Abbas, a member of the Egyptian Workers and Trade Unions Watch’s Ismailia branch told Daily News Egypt that the workers have 15 demands, including wage parity with employees of the Suez Canal Authority (of which the Canal Company is a subsidiary).

Average wages range between LE 250 and LE 600 per month.

Muhammad Anwar, the head of the company’s trade union committee, told Daily News Egypt that the workers’ primary grievance is the decision by the National Authority for Drinking Water and Sewage, taken three weeks ago, to cancel 19 water station projects the Canal Company has held since 1990.

“The National Authority claims that it’s because we were late in fulfilling our obligations. Yes, we were late, but it’s the National Authority which is responsible. We spent years exchanging correspondence with them clarifying aspects of the project, and this is what caused the delay,” Anwar explained.

Anwar says that the decision to cancel the projects with the Canal Company was premeditated.
“It was planned. This is part of a scheme to destroy the Canal Company and place state-owned utilities under the control of an international cartel.

“This protest is not just to defend workers’ rights. We are also defending national security,” Anwar told Daily News Egypt.

Abbas told Daily News Egypt that in 1996 a decision was made to stop buying spare parts for the company’s equipment.

“Young people no longer receive training in the company, and in fact there are no workers under 40 employed in it. In addition, one quarter of the company’s workers are on short-term contracts. This is part of an eventual plan to privatize the Suez Canal,” he said.

He says that services provided by the company are already being contracted out to private contractors.

“The company has to pay for the difference between what the work actually costs and the rate charged by the contractors. As a result, it is making a loss.

“Contractors however who deal with the Canal Company come out millionaires, and individuals within the company’s administration also benefit from these contracts,” Abbas said.

Statements from the school teachers

Posted on By 3arabawy

The following statements were distributed by the teachers during their protest last Saturday:

Few things I found interesting in the statements as well as the protest included:

1- The teachers were very critical of the Ministry of the Eduation and the regime in general, but also linked the malaise to the US pressures on the ME govts to “reform” their educational institutions.

2- The teachers are drawing parallels with other struggles, citing the successes of the Real Estate Tax Collectors, and discussing the need to coordinate with them as well as with the 9th of March Movement for the Independence of the Universities, which campaigns for the rights of Higher Education lecturers and staged the first university professors national strike in decades last March. In conversations with the teachers, also the word “Mahalla” pops up a lot.

3- In the absence of support from the state-backed Teachers’ Syndicate, the teachers are forming their own organizations to fight back, like “Teachers Without a Syndicate,” “Teachers’ Voice,” “Egypt’s Teachers’ Network [Under Establishment],” etc… But another phenomenon that’s worth paying attention for is the rising role of “el-Rawabet” (Associations) in leading the struggle. The Associations, in theory, are registered under the Ministry of Social Insurance as some form of “social clubs” for workers and civil servants. Their roles supposedly are non-political and limited to providing some social services. For some reason or another, the state’s control over these Associations is not as absolute and firm as its grip on the unions and syndicates. So, increasingly the workers and civil servants are using these associations as channels for activism and mobilization. The examples do not only include the teachers, whose associations have been central in the latest series of protests, but also we have the case of the railway workers, whose association members have been leading the strikes and the protests in that sector from 2007 onwards. Moreover, last month I visited the office of the General Tax Officers Association, located in one of the historical buildings in downtown Cairo. These officers belong to a different branch of the civil service, and receive roughly double if not triple the incomes of their counterparts at the Real Estate Tax Collection Agency. Yet, they have their problems and grievances, which the state-backed General Union of Bank and Insurance Workers is ignoring of course. So which channel are they using to lobby the govt? Their Association. Politics always finds a way…