Tag: tax collectors

[Above: Ghazl el-Mahalla strike leader Tarek Amin (R) talking to Nagy Rashad (L), one of the leaders of the 2007 Grain Mills occupations in Cairo and Giza, on the need to coordinate the efforts to establish independent unions in Egypt]

Some might have regarded  last Thursday’s meeting at the Center for Socialist Studies as a regular public meeting, but it was not. The meeting included some of the most hardcore fighters in the labor movement today, and a clear call was put forward from the leaders of the independent General Union of Real Estate Tax Collectors to the labor leaders in the traditional hotbeds of militancy in Mahalla, Steel Mills, Railways (in addition to other activists present who led heroic strikes in their workplaces), to push forward for free unions in their sectors.

The fight for free unions which started in January 2007, was to only escalate in 2008, with the tax collectors establishing the first independent trade union in the history of the country in 51 years.

A major point of strength for the tax collectors was their united leadership. The Higher Committee for the Real Estate Tax Collectors’ Strike which led the victorious 2007 protests, included both independents and those who were organized in political parties, but they were, again, united. With the exception of one member who was a source of great troubles both during the 2007 strike and during the 2008 free union building process, conducting provocation on behalf of the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions (no need to mention his name, coz he’s been rightly sidelined by the other leaders in the fall of 2008), all committee members worked very harmoniously. This may be partially due to their personalities, but more importantly this was the result of months and months of work and coordination with a struggle on the ground that was filtering out the good from the bad apples.

This is not the case unfortunately in other sectors (some of which are about to embrace a storm of strikes and others already have witnessed industrial actions). And this is a huge challenge that is not impossible to overcome it, I believe. There are ongoing efforts to resolve the “issues” between the different strike leaders, and from what I’m seeing, there is great progress. But the thing that will filter out, again, the good from bad apples and show the workers on the floor who’s worthy of leadership, will only be struggles from below… ie, strikes.. And it’s those strikes that finish off the hypocrites and force the sincere organizers to unite.

I’ve come across examples of labor leaders who are just full of shit. They might say the “right thing” when they are being interviewed by the media, posing as militant campaigners for workers’ rights, but then do the total opposite when it’s (the real) show time in the factory.

The labor leaders who convened on Thursday agreed to hold a regular monthly meeting, which is a GREAT MOVE! I’M VERY HAPPY FOR THAT.. The coordination mechanism that is slowly evolving now is different from the previous experiences the Egyptian left tried over the past decade, which took the form of the Workers’ Coordination Committee and other fronts, whose membership hardly included workers! They were activists who were primarily involved in generating solidarity with the workers’ actions. The (mainly media and fund raising) support given by the activists to the strikers proved on a number of occasions to be instrumental in the success of the fight.. But the WCC and other fronts were elitist, lacking any grassroots what so ever in the factories or the civil service. And there is nothing more obscene than seeing a number of the activists involved in these fronts going around claiming to be “strike leaders.” But last Thursday, and without making a media fuss, or putting up names for “fronts” and “committees”, the tax collectors and the participant labor leaders have just sown the seed for what will evolve into a new, independent, free, militant, real Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions.