Tag: unions

Clashes at Ain Shams University

Posted on By 3arabawy

I don’t have details yet, but it seems for the second day on the row, Ain Shams University’s campus in Abbassiya was the scene of clashes between the Free Student Union activists and those who belong to the government-appointed official Student Union, backed by criminal thugs who were allowed into campus with wooden sticks and sharp objects. The intimidation campaign is ongoing, while the university’s security personnel are absent from the scene, making sure the crackdown on the FSU to be portrayed as a students vs students affair.

UPDATE: A report by Aziz El-Kaissouni:

Plainclothes security disrupts Egypt student vote

CAIRO, Nov 13 (Reuters) – Plainclothes security men working with the police disrupted elections for unofficial student unions at Cairo’s Ain Shams university on Monday, Muslim Brotherhood and human rights sources said.
A Muslim Brotherhood student activist said the security men, working in large groups without uniforms or insignia, attacked voters and organizers with sticks, knives and bottles.
“They entered campus from the gates, with their sticks and everything, with the knowledge of (university) security,” said activist Muhammad Suleiman, adding that police stood by as students were assaulted.
The Muslim Brotherhood called for elections for “free” student unions throughout Egypt after almost all of their candidates were disqualified from the simultaneous official elections as part of a crackdown on opposition groups.
Suleiman said he and other students came under attack after one of the police officers in charge of campus security identified them by pointing them out in the crowd.
Muhammad Adel, a lawyer with the Egyptian Association for Supporting Democratic Development, said violence broke out in Ain Shams on Sunday as well and two students were seriously injured there. The association monitors elections.
Adel said the turnout at the universities where the unofficial elections are complete has been many times higher than for the official elections. A spokesman for the ministry of the interior declined to comment.
The Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt’s strongest opposition group, despite being banned since 1954. Members elected as independents hold 88 seats in the 454-member parliament, which is dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party.
The government controls state universities, which block Islamist candidates at student union elections every year.
The U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said last month that Egypt had intensified its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood with a new round of arbitrary arrests.

UPDATE: Student Union elections have become a microcosm of national polls outside the campus, writes Karim El-Khashab for Al-Ahram Weekly.

FSU elections

Posted on By 3arabawy

Faced with the security violations in the recent Student Union elections, the Muslim Brotherhood and Socialist Students have been mobilizing for the launch of the Free Student Union (FSU), in an attempt to establish an independent association that can represent Egypt’s student community without interference from the security services.

Today, the elections for the Free Student Union are underway in Ain Shams University. I was on the phone with rights lawyer Emad Mubarak, who went to the university campus to monitor the elections together with a group of activist academics.

In the Faculty of Commerce, where Emad is now, the security personnel mobilized the government-appointed Student Union officials to disrubt the FSU elections. Since 11am, dozens of those students have been assembling with drums, shouting and singing and harrassing anyone who approaches the place where the FSU elections poll is set up. The University Security personnel have withdrawn from the scene, in order to make the crackdown to be students vs students without govt involvement. Muslim Brotherhood activists are currently under siege at the university mosque.

In the Faculty of Law, Dr. Omar Helmi, the faculty’s dean, tore down the banner the FSU put up, but elections are still going.

UPDATE: A testimony by Dr. Aida Seif al-Dawla, who was present with a group of academics to monitor the FSU elections, could be found in Arabic here.

Trade union elections conducted amidst Labor Ministry interference

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received the following report form journalist and friend Jano Charbel, on the recent labor union elections he monitored.

Trade Union Elections Conducted Amidst Labor Ministry Interference
The nationwide trade union elections for 2006-2011 are in progress. This comes after extensive reports of vote rigging, ballot buying, and electoral fraud in the 2005 parliamentary elections, the two year postponement of municipal elections, widespread claims of voting irregularities in the elections for the chambers of commerce, and the yearly violations of student union elections.
The labor ministry has been actively interfering in all levels of the electoral process of the country’s trade unions – from the barring of over 12,000 opposition candidates (especially the Moslem Brotherhood) from running, to appeals against court verdicts requiring comprehensive judicial supervision of the elections, to the control of labor ministry personnel over ballot boxes, election monitoring, and vote counting.
“There are only 32 magistrates monitoring these elections – one in each of the 26 governorates plus one in each of six industrial zones” said Khaled Ali, a labor lawyer at the independent Hisham Mubarak Human Rights Center.
The Director of the independent Center for Trade Union & Workers’ Services, Kamal Abbas, said that “32 magistrates are not at all enough to adequately monitor these country-wide elections. Moreover, not all these magistrates are actually judges; there are some prosecutors amongst them. It is primarily the hand-picked labor ministry personnel who are, in fact, responsible for monitoring the elections and counting the votes. These personnel, if left unmonitored, are empowered pick and chose those votes that they want and discard those that they don’t want.”
Seeking to keep the judges out, on November 4th Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hady appealed against an Administrative Court ruling issued on November 2 to the effect that these union elections must be conducted under comprehensive judicial supervision.
Five years earlier the Supreme Constitutional Court issued a ruling declaring the results of the 2001-2006 trade union elections null and void. The SCC ruling was, however, entirely disregarded.
Despite these interventions and violations well over one million workers exercised their right to vote in nationwide trade union elections conducted on November 8. These elections were for 816 local union councils affiliated to 11 general unions (including – those of the Textile Workers, Public Utilities Workers, Railway Workers, Food Processing Workers, Electrical, Engineering & Metal Workers, Pharmaceutical & Chemical Workers, Printing, Publishing & Media Workers, Hotel & Tourism Workers, Administrative & Social Services Workers, Military Production Workers, and Petroleum Workers .)
A total of 1,403,766 workers cast their votes in nationwide trade union elections conducted on November 8 – representing a high voter turnout rate of between 60%-70% of all those unionized workers with the right to vote (according to the statistics issued by the Center for Trade Union & Workers’ Services.) This round of elections was extremely lively and highly competitive with a total of 16,835 candidates running for seats on 816 local union councils.
I was lucky enough to visit two unions during the voting process yesterday – including 1 of the 24 Cairo-based railway workers’ unions (there are a total of 34 such unions nationwide,) and the Helwan Iron & Steel Factory.
The railway elections were crowded, loud, and bustling with activity. 31 candidates were competing for 11 union council seats; around ten candidates from the Moslem Brotherhood, and one leftist candidate, were barred from running after the General Union of Railway Workers denied them their certification papers. One railway worker, Tagammu Party Member Reda Araby, who had been delegated by his co-workers to monitor the elections, said that “1,499 workers out of 2,204 had cast their votes – representing a voter turnout rate of over 68%”
“Voting started at 9am and ended at 5pm, yet the process of vote counting continued into the early hours” said Araby.
On election day at the Helwan Iron & Steel Factory – which is actually a giant industrial complex with tens of factories within, where buses transport the nearly 13,000 workers about, while trains carry industrial goods to and from the different work stations – there were a couple of surprise visitors.
Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hady and the President of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, Hussein Megawer, had dropped by the mammoth industrial complex for a speedy check-up on voting. When asked why the ballot boxes in use were not the standard transparent glass boxes used in the parliamentary elections? The minister, surrounded by dozens of bodyguards and journalists, replied “the glass ballot boxes are being put to use, but there are not enough to go around.” She and Megawer then boarded their black Mercedes and sped away.
Two leftist workers at the Helwan complex, Yousef Rashwan and Mustafa Naiyed, showed me around the factories and the 40 polling stations. They said that there were “numerous cases of electoral fraud and vote-rigging which were orchestrated by the factories’ administrations, and labor ministry personnel.” Seven candidates from the Moslem Brotherhood and one leftist candidate were prevented from running in these elections.
Rashwan said that “the polling stations were supposed to be open at 9am, but voting did not start until 10:30am. Many of the workers grew impatient and left, others could not leave their work stations.”
Naiyed, a union council member from 1996-2001, said that one of the ballot boxes was missing a cover and a lock, the workers demanded that this box must not be utilized as such, we had our way in the end. But then again, the labor ministry personnel have the ability to distort the votes in favor of those candidates that the ministry and the administration support.”
More alarmingly, Naiyed added “I had received my certification papers and had followed all the necessary procedures, yet I was shocked to find that my name was excluded from the electoral rosters. I am filing a case before the administrative courts against this violation.”
Both Rashwan and Naiyed were unsuccessful in securing seats on their local union council – likely due to the fact that they are vocal opposition workers.
Out of 12,575 workers only about 2,300 cast their votes (less than a 20% voter turnout) for the 94 candidates running for 21 seats on the union council.
The election process continues, nonetheless. Following the November 5th elections for the labor ministry’s employees, and the November 8th elections, there are elections for those hundreds of local unions affiliated to the remaining 12 general unions on November 13. Indirect elections for the 23 general unions are to be held on the 20th, and the Egyptian Trade Union Federation Council elections are scheduled for the 27th. Many more violations are expected.