Tag: tax collectors

My article in Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition:

In its 2009 Annual Survey of Trade Union Violations issued this week, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) accused the government of “bloody repression and arrests of union activists” in Mahalla, imposing draconian restrictions on industrial actions that make “legal strikes … virtually impossible,” as well as “heavily curtailing the right to form and join trade unions.”
The report also accused the state-backed Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions (EGFTU) of having “close relations with the (ruling) National Democratic Party” and of weak performance in both collective bargaining and in supporting industrial actions. The situation is bleaker, according to the report, in the private sector where “There is very little scope for collective bargaining,” while in the export-oriented Special Economic Zones (SEZs) “investment companies … are exempted from complying with legal clauses relating to labor organizing, thus depriving workers of the right to set up local union committees.”
Although it criticized the continued “barring of unions from engaging in political activities,” the ITUC report mentioned “two pieces of good news” including a halt to the state crackdown on the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS), a leading labor rights NGO, which resumed its activities last July, in addition to the launching of the independent Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees last December—the first independent trade union in Egypt since 1957.
The CTUWS, however, said in a statement it was under the government spotlight recently once more, with renewed harassment against its director Kamal Abbas, who was interrogated and kept for an hour in police custody at the Cairo International Airport. The latter almost missed the plane he was catching to Brussels to attend an ITUC regional conference on 2 July.
The situation is tenser with the Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees (URETAE), whose activists are facing a public campaign by the state-backed EGFTU officials in the press and on TV. Officials have been routinely denouncing the URETAE, declared on 20 December 2008 following the endorsement of around 30,000 property tax collectors in 29 provinces, as an “illegal” entity. Union activists, according to Abdel Qader Nada, a leading member of the union and one of the leaders of the three-month strike in 2007, have been subject to a harassment campaign from both the management and the state-backed officials of the General Union of Bank, Insurance and Financial Workers. “Whenever we try fund raising for the union, we get investigated for collected ‘illegal funds,’” Nada told Al-Masry Al-Youm. “That’s a serious charge.”
URETAE lawyer Haitham Mohammadein notes that the government still deducts the monthly membership fees of the EGFTU from the property tax collectors’ monthly salaries, though more than 35,000 civil servants have already resigned from the EGFTU to join URETAE. Moreover, “Physical force is now being used against the independent trade unionists,” Mohammadein was alarmed.
“Two colleagues at least were assaulted by the (EGFTU) officials,” Nada accused. “Ahmad Abul Yazid, the head of the union in Gharbeia and Ahmad Abdel Sabour from Sharqiya were both beaten up by the government union thugs. They were insulted and slapped on the faces, pushed and kicked.
“We welcome international solidarity from the ITUC and any other labor unions,” Nada said. “The (Egyptian) government is determined to break us.”
Attempts by Al-Masry Al-Youm to get comment from Hussein Megawer, the head of the EGFTU and Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi failed, as their offices never returned the calls.
The ITUC is the largest global labor federation, representing 168 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national affiliates.