Tag: unions

Doctors protest at finance ministry, but disagreements prevail

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports:

Doctors protested pay conditions outside the ministry of finance Tuesday, amidst clear divisions between the Doctors’ Syndicate, which organized the protest, and rights group Doctors Without Rights (DWR).
Some 40 doctors took part in the protest, holding up signs reading “the ministry of finance gives with its right hand and takes with its left” and, “what happened to [prime minister] Nazif’s promises about improvements in pay?”
“[The Syndicate and DWR] differ on a fundamental point: do we demand only the basic minimum wage and keep on calling for it even if the government doesn’t award it to us, or do we work on gradual improvement?” Doctors’ Syndicate secretary-general Essam El-Erian told Daily News Egypt.
“Through gradual improvement we will eventually be able to add pay improvements given to us to the [existing] basic wage, and will end up with a salary with is equivalent to the basic minimum wage DWR are calling for,” El-Erian continued.
A Syndicate statement handed out during the protest called on finance minister Youssef Botros Ghali to implement the pay pledges made as part of the prime ministerial decree 318 that introduced pay rises in the form of a doctors’ incentive payment.
While the first stage of this pay scheme was received by some doctors, Nazif last month announced that as a result of the global economic crisis, there are “insufficient funds” to implement the second stage of the pay scheme.
DWR meanwhile have long called for a fixed, basic minimum wage whose payment is not subject to the whims of hospital management, as is the case with incentive payments and allowances, DWR says.
El-Erian pointed to the problems in payment of the basic minimum wage in other sectors.
“Judges complain of two things; financial independence, and the fact that the minimum wage they receive is not enough. There is a new minimum wage for school teachers whose implementation has been extremely difficult — there are protests every day as a result. It’s the same problem everywhere. What counts now is the money going into doctors’ pockets today, and the pension they will receive in the future,” El-Erian explained.
DWR meanwhile were critical of the decision to protest outside the ministry of finance, saying in a statement that their participation was “symbolic”.
“The doctors’ allowance was issued without ensuring that sufficient funds exist to finance it — stripping it of all meaning, and making clear that its real objective was to deceive doctors,” DWR says in a statement.
“By protesting outside the ministry of finance we are sending the message that we don’t understand that we are being deliberately deceived … and that we believe the minister of health’s claims that his decisions are genuine and only stalled by the minister of finance”.

U.R.E.T.A.

Posted on By 3arabawy

The Real Estate Tax Collectors‘ free union leaders are now meeting with labor lawyers and journalists, in downtown Cairo drafting the constitution of the union.

The official name of the union will be:
نقابة العاملين بالضرائب العقارية
Union of Real Estate Tax Authority employees (URETA)

The activists are discussing the official phrasing of the articles detailing the “objectives” and the “membership” of the union… The general assembly of the free union which elected the current leadership last December, delegated the latter the authority to draft the constitution. The union leadership has engaged since then in discussion with the base cadres and the representatives in the provinces, listening to suggestions.

Today, the leaders are convening in Cairo with labor lawyers and journalists to put together the charter. I’m at the meeting, connected to the internet via USB modem. I’ll post more later.

Statement from the Tax Collectors Free Union

Posted on By 3arabawy

The Tax Collectors‘ Free Union issued a statement denouncing the state-backed General Union of Insurance, Bank and Finance Workers, accusing the latter of trying to hijack the free union’s project to establish a retirement fund for the Real Estate Tax Collectors.

The latest move by general union head Farouk Shehata comes amid continuous stepped up rhetoric by the state-backed union bureaucrats. I was chatting with a labor organizer involved in the current unionization effort about this issue a couple of days ago. He summed up the attitude of the state union men by this: “First, they tried to crush to strikes. They failed. They decided to step aside and do nothing, watching helplessly, only to find the carpet being pulled from beneath their feet slowly. The tax collectors (free union) was a big hit to them. Now it’s become a fashion to speak about independent unions everywhere. They felt their existence is coming to an end. That’s why they started raising their voices and shout every now and then. You have general union heads, with great history of betrayals and treason, suddenly saying they support or even call for strikes. (President of the corrupt, state backed General Federation of Trade Unions Hussein) Megawer is getting into fights with (Finance Minister Youssef Botross) Ghali over demands. You can expect more of this in the future. But there are limits of course and red lines they will never cross, and you don’t know for how long they’d be able to maintain this very fragile balance between the workers and the govt they are serving. After all those ‘yellow trade unionists’ got their jobs thanks to State Security (police).”