Tag: transport

Public transportation workers on strike إضراب عمال النقل العام

Posted on By 3arabawy

I’m receiving news that 3000 public transportation workers are on strike in Cairo. They include bus drivers, ticket collectors, maintenance workers in the stations of Nasr and Fateh, located in my neighborhood Nasr City, east of the capital.

I’ll post more details soon.

UPDATE: The Sixth District of Nasr City has turned into a military zone, with heavy police deployments. The strikers are under siege. No photographers or reporters are allowed in. The strikers number something between 2000 and 3000. The workers are demanding raising their ridiculously low salaries (you can work for 10 years, and your basic salary won’t exceed LE500). They are also demanding a corruption investigation into their housing society, especially with the existence of 26 emergency cases of workers without houses. The strikers are also demanding equality in food allowances. While the driver receives LE100 a month, the ticket collector receives LE55, and the maintenance worker gets LE20!! The strikers are demanding the food allowance to be raised more than LE100 and to be paid equally to everybody.

The strikers, in addition, want an increase in their percentage of the bus tickets sales. The workers get 2.5% of the value of the sold ticket. They want to increase this to 10%.

The workers are also protesting their treatment when they get transferred from their jobs due to medical reasons. The government cuts down their bonuses from LE300 to LE70!

The workers have occupied the two stations (Nasr and Fateh), which have 149 buses. The government managed only to bring out less than 40. The rest are under the workers’ control.

The public transportation workers in Sawwah and Giza have not joined the strike yet, but my sources say they are following closely what’s happening in Nasr City, and there’s a possibility the industrial action will spread.

Could that be another 1976? Back then, public transportation workers launched a national strike, one day after Sadat was declared president by 99% in a sham referendum. This paved the road to the January 1977 Bread Intifada.

UPDATE: It’s 10pm now. The strike continues in Nasr and Fateh stations… but no information is available yet if anything happened in the other stations in Cairo or Giza. I was told the chief of the Public Transport Authorities arrived in person to negotiate with the strikers. He asked them to suspend the strike, and promised their demads will be met in July with the start of the new financial year. The workers refused, and are still sitting in.

1000 transportation workers on strike in Mahalla

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received a statement from the Workers’ Coordinating Committee saying 1000 bus drivers, ticket collectors, maintenance workers in El-Mahalla El-Kobra’s Bus Service have gone on strike since the morning. The workers are demanding their late bonus payments from their management. In addition, rumors are sweeping the company that the government will allow Ghabbour’s (private) Company to run bus lines on the same routes taken by the government’s bus service, in a move signals the govt’s intent on liquidating its bus service on these Mahalla routes, and sack its labor force.

The giant is awakening slowly…

A victory achieved by strikers in one factory, could encourage fellow workers to launch their own fight in the neighboring factory. Unfortunately, I did not have time up till now to write something substantial on the escalating militancy among the Egyptian working class. I hope I’ll put together something by next month. In the meantime, keep your eyes on the Nile Delta industrial towns–the historical hotbed of proletarian politics, and on the transportation sector: railways and trams.

So you get Tora and Cement workers going on strike after the victory achieved by the Textile workers in Mahalla. Underground Metro drivers slowed down their trams from 90km/h to 30 km/h in solidarity with the train drivers who blocked the trains with their bodies the day before yesterday, sending chills to the bones of every official at the Ministry of Transportation.

The struggle in one sector spills over to other sectors. It’s the domino effect, which became almost a natural law of activism. Victories open the appetite of everybody, and defeats demoralize the whole class.

But we are witnessing now a slow upturn in industrial militancy. Egypt’s movement for change, and in specific the revolutionary left, MUST DO ITS BEST to link its struggle against Mubarak’s autocratic regime to that in the floorshops in those factories. A general strike in this country should rid us from the regime and its gestapo once and for all. Hit them where it hurts… their pockets!

The Winter of Labor Discontent comes also as a slap on the face of those among Egypt’s new left, who have turned their backs on the working class, with their elitist neoliberal-disguised-as-leftist politics that supports privatization and claims independent working class activities are impossible, because the workers are “immature” and “not ready to play an independent role.” Well, guess what? 27,000 workers went on strike in Mahalla in December., and those “immature, dirty, illiterate” brown-faced workers occupied their factory, formed committees to manage their strike, formed security teams to patrol their factory making sure no sabotage happened, took their decisions democratically in mass meetings… and last but not least, their “economic” strike over bread and butter issues, quickly turned “political” strike in the end with thousands of workers chanting “Kefaya Mubarak! Kefaya Gamal!” and that’s when the regime, pissing in its pants, rushed to meet the workers’ demands.

Again, and again, and again, I’d like to repeat that the movement for change in Egypt is DOOMED to failure, unless we link ourselves to Mahalla, Helwan and their industrial sister towns.

More later…

اللجنة التنسيقية للحقوق والحريات النقابية والعمالية
إضراب عمال مرفق أتوبيس المحلة
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منذ صباح اليوم دخل عمال مرفق أتوبيس المحلة الكبرى في إضراب شامل عن العمل ضم السائقين والكمسارية وعمال الورش والجراجات والبالغ عددهم ألف عامل، وذكر المضربون لمبعوث اللجنة التنسيقية بالمحلة أن الإضراب جاء احتجاجا على امتناع الإدارة والمحافظة عن صرف الحافز والاضافى من ناحية ، وعلى محاولات خصخصة المرفق من ناحية ثانية حيث نما إلى علم العمال وجود اتفاق بين المحافظة وإحدى شركات غبور على تسيير أتوبيسات لشركة غبور على نفس خطوط أتوبيسات المرفق ليحدث إحلال تدريجي في الخطوط، وقد تأكد ذلك للعمال من قيام شركة الأهرام بتسيير أتوبيسات على خط ميت غمر المحلة تمهيدا لتسيير أتوبيسات جديدة على خطوط جديدة.

الاثنين 22/1/2007