UPDATE 9:30am: A number of the strikers are leaving the factory, on their way to demonstrate in front of the Daqahliya Province Governorate HQ in Mansoura

UPDATE: 12noon: Central Security Forces surrounded the factory. State Security officers are threatening strikers with arrests.. Fire truck opened water canons on the strikers.

UPDATE: 5:30pm: I was out most of the day, but I’ve been twittering the strike. I hope you were following my Twitter account. The strike was suspended under pressures from the police and labor ministry officials. The troops siege was only lifted when the workers were allowed to leave the factory compound by 4pm.

The security guard at the company gate, whose name is Yasser, will be punished by the management for “allowing journalists into the factory” and for refusing to testify against a colleague accused by the management of letting the workers out of the warehouses exit, after the management tried locking them up inside the factory. They will deduct 10 days from his salary.

Mohsen el-Sha’er’s saga continues, while it seems the management has halted its earlier move against the four other workers.

There was production yesterday in the company as an order for 1,600 pieces of garments came through. The workers complain since the brokering of the agreement last year (which was betrayed by the United Bank), the management did not seek any new clients for the firm and the total time spent in production amounted to one or two months out of the entire year. Prior to 2006, the workers say the company used to produce 6,000 pieces of garments a month to client around the world, including the US.

El-Sha’er, 34, was investigated by the company management last Saturday on charges of “talking to the press.” On the following day he was banned from entering the factory by the company security, triggering a demonstration at the gate by the (largely female) work force. The protesters blocked the gate in the face of El-Sayyed Galal, one of the managers. Officials from the owning United Bank failed to show up for a scheduled meeting yesterday at the office of Nahed el-Ashri, the Labor Minister’s secretary, that included the company trade unionists and labor ministry officials.

The latest crisis is happening amid fury in the factory over the management’s betrayal of the agreement brokered last year after a two month occupation of the factory by the workers. The management only paid the workers their May Day grants and social raises for the year 2007, and stalled paying the grants and raises unpaid from 1999 to 2006. And although the bank had promised to inject money into the firm and revive the production operations, the total time spent on production orders over the past year amounted to roughly one month, according to el-Sha’er. Everyday the workers show up at the factory, and wait in vain from 8am to 3pm for production ordres, but nothing comes. The workers are also concerned as news emerged that the company was sold on the first of June of this year to MP Youssri Moughazi who has already declared that he was not responsible for paying the workers any of their overdue rights.

The sit in at the factory is expected to resume today at 8am.

But one thing to note about the factory is that out of its 1,300 labor force, there are 750 female workers according the EWTUW. They had a leading role in the protests, and were joined by their children in the factory, where they slept at night on the tiles covered with cardboards in horrible conditions. Still they held out. The resilience of the women workers in the ongoing industrial actions is just impressive.

I received also some updates on the Mansoura España Garments Company, from Francesca, an AUC grad student researching Egyptian labor and gender:

On Sunday April 20, the 250 workers of Mansoura-España received the news that the firm had been sold by the majority shareholder United Bank to Parliament Member and business man Yousry Faris (Al Masri al Yawm) or Yousry El-Moghazy (Al Dustour). The MP is also the owner of the Delta Academy, which flanks the Mansoura-España grounds, as well as factories in 6 October and Port Said. According to Amal, a worker at the factory who participated in the workers’ 2-month sit-in almost exactly a year ago, the MP announced that he would not be responsible for honoring the agreements reached between the bank, the firm, and the local factory union that had brought that action to a close. He reportedly offered the workers employment at his other factories, an impossible prospect for workers who are mostly based in Talkha, Mansoura, and neighboring villages.
Last year’s agreement delivered increased wages and partial payment of the yearly bonus payments that had been owed to the workers since 1996. However, workers say they have still not been compensated in full. More than these unfulfilled promises, it is the sale of the company and the prospect of losing their jobs that has again brought the Mansoura-España workers to the stage of collective action. Al Masri al Yawm reports that they have threatened to sustain the sit-in until their demands are answered, but their prospects as a medium-sized private sector firm do not appear strong. Amal reports that for the workers (the majority of which are women) another action involving the overnight occupation of the factory will be socially difficult.
Last year’s sit in garnered much media attention for the strong efforts of the female workers who slept in the factory to sustain the sit-in. Many of these women faced serious chastisement or punishment from their family members, who disapprove of women being absent from their household responsibilities and/or for spending the night with their male co-workers. It was the fact that these women participated at this level that made last year’s strike feasible – many of the male workers at the company work additional jobs (because the Mansoura-España wages are particularly low) and would leave the sit-in to go to them.
Amal says that negotiations between the new owner and the factory union (which has close interpersonal relationships with the factory management) will take place in the next two weeks. Note that this threatened strike action takes place concurrently with strikes at private Delta textile companies Sigad Damanhour and Wobreyat Samanoud, but with very different stated goals — workers at Damanhour and Samanoud are claiming the grants and bonuses promised by PM Nazif to the workers of Ghazl al-Mahalla two weeks ago.

I called up a contact in the factory. He said they went on a strike for two days on the 19th and 20th. The strike was disbanded on afternoon of the 20th after an agreement was reached between the strikers on the one hand, and the Labor Ministry officials, a State Security officer by the name Baher, Officers from the Talkha Police Station and a representative from the United Bank whose first name is Nader on the other, by which the United Bank was given 15 days to pay the rest of bonuses and May Day grants. The worker also expressed concerns over new that Moghazi is stepping in to buy the company, since he is one of the shareholders in the neighboring Delta Academy (which is primarily owned by Muhammad Rabi’e, who wants to acquire the factory land, demolish it, to expand the academy campus. The workers in the factory are not kept in the loop about the managements plans. The sale of their factory is not confirmed officially up till now, according to the worker I spoke with, but “it looks like it’s coming. That will be a different story. We have to get our unpaid rights first, completely, all of them, and then see what we’ll do with the future of the company.”

In other news, Sarah Carr reports on a dentists’ protest that was foiled by Mubarak’s pigs.

“Tomorrow is Friday, the day off. The management can sabotage the machines, and then blame us on Saturday when we show up,” said one of the female garment workers in a telephone interview.

I asked another male worker, also on the phone, what they would do on Saturday, and whether there were any production orders they would work on. “No, we have not received a single production order from the management in a month and half, as the bank was planning to liquidate the firm. We will show up on time on Saturday, and stay in the factory from 7am to 3pm. If the management brings us a production order, we’ll resume work right away. If there is not, then we will stay in the factory.”

Asked about the workers’ response if they showed up on Saturday only to find their company closed down, the male worker said they were planning to protest outside the company and blockade the highway in front of the factory, while the female worker asserted they were planning to storm the factory again and occupy it if the United Bank betrays the agreement.

The agreement to be in effect starting today, was brokered in a meeting that included: Hussein Megawer, the head of General Federation of Trade Unions, Muhammad Adel el-Sanhoury and Haitham Ahmad Atef of the United Bank, Nahed el-Ashry of the Labor Ministry, Said el-Gohary, the head of the General Union of Textile Workers, and head of the Factory Union Committee Hamdi el-Maghrabi and his deputy Adel Hassaballah.

1- The workers’ May salaries will be paid today. The June salaries will be paid next Thursday.
2-The May Day grants from 1 July 2006 to 31 May 2007 will be paid today (LE10 per month = LE110 for each worker)
3-The social bonuses for the year 2006 will be paid, with a minimum LE30… Moreover it will be paid to all workers, whether they have contracts or not.
4-(MORE IMPORTANTLY) The Company WILL NOT BE LIQUIDATED. The United Bank pledged work will continue in the factory. If the bank fails to pump investments into the company and decides to sell it, the selling agreement must include guarantees from the new investor to keep the company going without firing a single worker, or cutting (the already ultra-low) the workers’ salaries. This means the bank cannot sell the company, as rumoured, to the neighboring Delta Academy as a real estate property to be razed.
5-No worker who took part in the industrial action will be victimized. The sacking decrees given to trade unionist Mohsen el-Sha’er and the five women workers are revoked.
6-A committee, headed by Hussein Megawer, has been formed to supervise the implementation of the agreement including the officials, managers and trade unionists who were present in the parliamentary session. This committee will also look into the rest of the workers’ demands that have to do with the unpaid bonuses and May Day grants (now prior to 2006).

The workers in the factory are expected to disband their sit-in today, after they receive their May salaries. “We are optimistic this time,” a worker told me over the phone. “We are happy there will be no victimization, and that the company will continue. Where else would we have gone? The street? The management now knows what we are capable of. We will disband the sit-in after we get paid tomorrow (i.e., Thursday). If they don’t give us the rest of our rights we will occupy the factory again.”

MABROUK for the Mansoura-España workers! Mabrouk for the women workers who were braver and more militant than their male colleagues throughout those two months. Mabrouk for those who want to see the women of our country empowered in the social and economic spheres. The women’s struggle at that factory was a clear proof that the fight for the liberation of women is not a fight to take away the veil or the niqab. Virtually all the women in the Talkha factory were veiled and few were in niqab, but they left their families and slept outside their homes, sharing one roof with their male colleagues, which is a bloody TABOO for women in Egypt, even those upper-class secular feminists in Cairo. It’s not about that bloody piece of cloth (though I support neither of the veil nor the niqab), but I’m not gonna waist my time debating those liberal feminists over that question.. they can go to Farouk Honsi instead and he’ll be all ears… Ya Farouk, you who equated the veil with backwardness, can you see what the veiled women in Mansoura-España did? Was that backwardness? The source of backwardness in this country are people like you, Suzan and the National Council of Women who have reduced women’s liberation to the Rotary and the Cairo Capital Club meetings, Shame on you!

The workers in the Mansoura-España factory would like to send their warmest regards to all the journalists and activists who stood by them. And they ask you to keep an eye on the factory, lest the United Bank betrays the agreement.

Now those women can go back to their homes, with their heads up high, they have gone through so much hardship, but they won.

Can we expect women who were definitely toughened by that experience to accept abuse when they go back to their husbands and families? Will they, let’s say, get slapped on the face now, and stay silent?! I’m willing to bet on anything that those women’s lives have changed by 180 degrees, thanks to their struggle at the factory.

If a woman managed to stay in a factory for that long, resisting intimidation from the government, the management, the police, and social stigmas, would she just go back home to the same old shit!? Hell no! The only way to empower our country’s women are these joint struggles from below.

Mabrouk! Mabrouk! Mabrouk!

While the trip by the Cairo Kefaya activists has been cancelled, Kefaya activists in Mansoura will still go ahead with the planned demo in front of the bank’s branch in Mansoura by noon.

The management sacked today trade unionist Mohsen el-Shae’r, and five women workers: Soua’d Mamdouh, Soua’d Salama, Sabreen Sabri, Hoda Said, and Nermin Abbas, accusing them of agitating for a strike.

The workers’ names were reported to the Talkha Police Station, together with 15 other names of workers the company is accusing of instigating the current industrial action.