Tag: unions

Doctors to protest syndicate decision to call off strike

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports:

Doctors said they will stage a seven day sit-in at the Doctors’ Syndicate after the board postponed the two-hour strike which was meant to begin this Sunday, March 15.
In a statement, the lobby group Doctors Without Rights condemned the decision to postpone the strike.
“The union has betrayed doctors’ hopes … on the pretext that it wishes to protect doctors and not expose them to the administrative or legal measures threatened by the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister,” the statement reads.
In a radio interview last week Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif threatened doctors planning to strike, saying, “Many people are perhaps unaware of the fact that public sector employees — in particular doctors — are prohibited from striking. Those who wish to express themselves have many alternative methods to stopping work.”
Nazif’s claim that a strike by doctors would be illegal has been criticized by rights group such as the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, which in a statement issued on March 6 rebutted Nazif’s comments, saying that doctors have the “constitutional right” to strike.
Doctor Mona Mina, member of Doctors Without Rights, told Daily News Egypt that the decision to postpone the strike — issued after a meeting between the Syndicate board and regional branches of the Syndicate — was taken “illegitimately.”
“The decision to strike was taken during a general assembly meeting of the Syndicate which saw one of the biggest turnouts in 15 years,” Mina said.
“Attendees were unanimous in their rejection of the Health Ministry’s offer to raise wages through allowances, and the majority voted for strike action. A decision taken by the general assembly can only be cancelled by the general assembly,” she continued.
Doctors reject allowance payments for shifts and other duties because, they say, they are not always paid. They are calling for a LE 1,000 fixed minimum wage.

For more background on the doctors’ struggle, check out this posting.

Professors mobilize for national strike

Posted on By 3arabawy

The Professors’ “Strike Coordination Committee” issued a statement, with a set of demands to the govt, urging all university lecturers and assistant lecturers to join in the national mobilization on 23 March.

My heart and thoughts go out to the brave professors who are leading the fight for the independence of the university from police rule and for improving the work conditions for tens of thousands of lecturers around the country.

I hope to see good mobilization by the Socialist Students, MBs and all other student groups on the campuses in solidarity with their teachers.

In other developments, Doctors without Rights called for a meeting 14 March, one day before the planned sit-in, to discuss strategy and tactics vis a vis the syndicate board and the govt…

UPDATE: The profs have launched a blog for planning and publicizing the strike. Check it out here.

Railway Union okays two of train drivers’ demands

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports:

The National Railway Union agreed to two of the train drivers’ five demands when they met yesterday in El-Wosta, Beni Suef.
The drivers met union representatives to discuss a bundle of demands pertaining to allowances and working conditions.
Some 60 drivers held a protest before the meeting during which they held up banners listing their demands. This follows the five-hour protest held last week on March 2.
Negotiations between drivers and the union lasted for approximately one hour. Drivers listed a bundle of demands, most of which pertain to wage parity with drivers based elsewhere in Egypt.
The union agreed to the payment of an allowance which drivers are entitled to under a decree issued five years ago, but which has not been paid in full to drivers based in El-Wosta.
Back payment of this allowance will add up to a roughly LE 1,500 lump sum for many drivers.
The union also agreed to drivers’ demand that they receive an allowance given to drivers for standby fire engine shifts.
The union did not accept drivers’ demands to receive health insurance like their counterparts based in Minya. In addition, the drivers’ principal demand — that they report to the central Cairo office rather than Assiut — is “under consideration.”

Note here that the negotiations, like in many other cases, were conducted between “representatives of the workers” and “union members.” Now, in theory a labor union should be the “representative” of the laborers in a workplace, and the one to lobby for their interests vis a vis the management. But not in Egypt and other dictatorships, where the unions are decoy, state-sponsored, and more or less part of the govt, and the workers understand whose side they are on.

The overwhelming majority of the strikes happening over the past couple of years were opposed by the local unions and the Federation. In Kafr el-Dawar, the strikers “detained” the Factory Union Committee members to force them to join the occupation, while in Mahalla the workers hospitalized Seddiq Siyam the head of the FCU during last September’s strike. In the Real Estate Tax Collectors’ strike, the workers elected a “Higher Committee for the Strike” that wasn’t composed of the union members, and the latter were excluded from negotiations… Spontaneous leaders (those referred to as “the representatives of the workers”) are appearing in workplaces, and it’s the task of political dissidents who are organizing against the Mubarak’s dictatorship to start forging links with them as well as putting those leaders in touch with another to exchange experiences and start a real push from below for the much delayed project of launching parallel independent labor unions and destroy the corrupt, Mubarak-backed General Federation.