Tag: unions

Solidarity needed with Socialist trade unionist

Posted on By 3arabawy

In a new attack on labor activists, the government-backed members of the Union Committee for the Giza Labor Directorate civil servants have summoned Socialist trade unionist Fatma Ramadan for interrogation today, threatening to freeze her union membership, part of a witch-hunt against dissident trade unionists.

The government-backed members have officially requested from the higher union body, the General Union of Administrative Services, to freeze Fatma’s union membership for: “inciting the employees,” “contacting the media,” “adopting illegal means of communications” (as Fatma led a campaign of petitions, directed to the Labor Minister herself, over the work conditions of the civil servants), and “distributing leaflets.”

UPDATE: The Workers’ Solidarity Committee issued a statement denouncing the crackdown.

Workers take to the streets: The strikes of 2007

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt…

In 2007 Egypt witnessed an unprecedented level of labor unrest as workers from textile factories to public transport to tax collectors went on strike, mainly over low wages and poor working conditions.
According to the Egyptian Workers and Trade Union Watch (EWTUW) there were over 580 industrial actions this year alone.
The Egyptian and much of the international press were awash with footage and images of angry workers holding sit-in protests, marching through the streets and reading out demands. The various strikes were particularly sensational given the general silence over labor issues in Egypt, where independent trade unions are illegal.
Many analysts pointed to the anti-governmental nature of the strikes, noting workers’ demands for the legalization of independent trade unions and the halt of neo-liberal economic reforms, and suggested that they doubled as a form of political protest on a scale that organizations like the Kefaya Movement for Change have failed to achieve.
The textile industry saw a series of strikes in 2007 throughout the Nile Delta.
By far the largest in terms of size and publicity was at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra. Unrest at this factory first began in late 2006, inspiring a wave of similar strikes in the following months.
After workers had seemingly succeeded in securing from the government increased pay and an investigation into alleged corruption within the plant’s leadership, their demands were never met.
In September this year they walked off the job again and erected a tent-city inside the gates of the plant to support their 25,000-strong protest. For five days groups of employees were televised beating drums and chanting slogans demanding the dismissal of the chairman of the company Mahmoud El-Gebali.
The government carried out this demand at the end of November, and also agreed to follow through with the guarantees it had made in December of the previous year about wage rises, bonus payments and improving working conditions.
“The workers are very happy, this is a big victory for us,” Muhammad El Attar, one of the leaders of the Mahalla movement, told Daily News Egypt. “But our demands haven’t all been fulfilled yet. This is not over.”
Away for the factories, in January railway workers prevented a first-class train from leaving from Cairo to Alexandria, and threatened a national stoppage until the government agreed to their demands. Throughout the strike Metro workers slowed their trains from 55 to 20 miles per hour in solidarity.
Metro workers were involved again on May 1, when almost 3,000 transportation workers including bus drivers, ticket collectors and maintenance technicians occupied the Nasr and Fateh bus stations in Nasr City preventing the use of public buses to demand wage increases. The following day 1,000 Metro workers with similar demands joined in. “I can barely afford to feed my family,” one Metro Authority employee and father of three told the press. “My monthly salary, which comes to about $80, doesn’t last 10 days.”
Two days of subsequent negotiations resulted in a promise from the transportation ministry that workers’ complaints would be looked into.
In early December, Railway safety technicians maintained a protest of about 50 men in Ramses station to protest low wages and working conditions, and blamed station masters and higher management for Egypt’s notoriously poor railway safety record. Some of their demands were met
Soon the striking fever reached Egypt’s civil servants. Following a series of strikes that began in April, about 55,000 Real Estate tax collectors, shut down their offices and went on strike. Hundreds of them from all over the country protested outside the Cabinet office in downtown Cairo early December for 10 days demanding increased wages.
They demanded that the Real Estate Tax Authority, which is now affiliate to the local municipalities, be returned to the Ministry of Finance, as it was prior to 1974. They also called for the resignation of the head of the Real Estate Tax Authority, Ismail Abdel Rasoul, whom they claim had intentionally misinformed the government with regards to workers’ pay rates.

Ghazl el-Mahalla Updates: CEO IMPEACHED

Posted on By 3arabawy

Bon Voyage Gebali who will be investigated for corruption, and farewell to the rest of his cronies at the management board.

The General Assembly also decreed another 45 days from the annual profit shares, raising the total received by the workers to 135 days. The workers were originally demanding a minimum of 130 days.

There is euphoria in Mahalla among the workers, according to my labor sources, who feel very much empowered by Gebali’s overthrowal. The period that preceded the General Assembly was a time of psychological warfare between the management and the workers, with campaigns launched to convince the workers to drop the demand of impeaching Gebali and his cronies (fearing this could be replicated in other public sector companies). Statements and counterstatements were circulated on the factory floor, and there was talk of launching another strike soon if Gebali wasn’t impeached…

There are still issues that need to be addressed, specifically regarding the Factory Union Committee in Ghazl el-Mahalla… whether the right way to go about it is to continue pushing for its impeachment (and holding elections for a new committee within the structure of state-backed Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions), or start mobilizing for an alternative union inside the company. I have blogged before about how farce attempts to parachute a national union from the sky could be. There is a need however to start pushing for alternative associations or unions inside the companies that witnessed the strikes, one each, at the grassroots level, and there is no place more ready for this than Ghazl el-Mahalla, which spearheaded the anti-govt unions movement from the start.

The strike leaders of the December 2006 and the September 2007 are the LEGITIMATE representatives of the workers, not the corrupt Factory Union Committee officials who sided with the management and the police, and whose head, Seddiq Siyam, ended up in the hospital and resigned after the workers ate him alive in September. The Federation officials have tried to seduce the strike leaders throughout the summer with promises of “Representatives’ Committee” and “sidelining” the FUC officials, etc.. These turned out to be farce, together with the other promised economic demands. It had to take another strike in September to enforce the implementation of the June and July agreements.

At the moment, the strike leaders and a circle around them are the defacto union representatives… meaning if the police, govt, management, or the devil wants to send a message to the 27000 workers, or implement something, they seek the strike leaders to confer, consult, warn or threaten… The govt knows who runs the show on the factory floor… Last time they asked the FUC to intervene, the head as mentioned above ended up in the hospital.

There is a need however to start translating our victories into institutions.. meaning… the strike leaders have to decide soon among themselves and the factory floor, what’s to be done about the union question.

In my view the time is very much ripe to launch an alternative association in the factory that would enforce itself on the govt. But I also expect the govt if faced with this, will cow in at the last moment and impeach the FUC officials. The balance of forces then, coupled with the mood on the factory floor, how much intervention the radical left can make, the relations between the independent vs. the organized activists in the factory will then determine if Ghazl el-Mahalla will witness the birth of Egypt’s first independent labor union or not.