From Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition:
Egyptian workers from across the country came together for a joint meeting on Friday night at the Al-Hilaly Organization for Freedom of Speech, downtown Cairo, to talk of their experiences in combating poor conditions, low wages and factory administration. It was one of the increasingly frequent mass meetings, where workers converged to show solidarity with their compatriots, in what many hope will change the tide of burgeoning industrial action.
The workers, including a number from Tanta Flax and Oil Company, which has now entered its third month of action against the Saudi owner who has refused to neither pay back salaries nor negotiate with the strikers.
A scheduled sit-in at the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration was scheduled for today, but the state-backed General Union of Textile Workers decided last night to back out.
Safwat Michel, a worker at the factory, said, “the roads would have been blocked so we called it off,” for fear of “arrest or a confrontation.”
The cancellation comes after last Tuesday’s upheaval in Tanta after a journalist with the independent daily Ad-Dustour and a television crew attempted to film inside the factory. Security and factory administration refused to allow them into the factory, causing the workers to head to the streets in protest. At least nine anti-riot security force vehicles arrived on the scene shortly after and forced the workers to back down, but not before they achieved a minor victory. Officer Ashraf Darwish, who had been in charge of media at the factory, was transferred upon the strikers’ demand, which ostensibly has now opened the factory to the media, Michel confirmed.
In Cairo, the optimism was apparent, as often loud and heated arguments erupted over the course of action that could be taken by all the workers in a unified stance against what they called the “oppression” of their factories’ administrations.
One of the options discussed was a possible re-nationalization of the factories by the government in order to ensure their rights are guaranteed. With rising costs of living and food prices skyrocketing, many workers continue to persist on salaries of a decade, or longer, ago.
“There is a need for the government to rethink these sales contracts, so the land would still belong to the country even if the government had to give back some money to the investors,” said Nabih Abdel Ghani of Tagammu Party, an option unlikely to be received well by the authorities.
Many workers live on around LE12 per day, hardly enough to survive themselves, but with families, they argue, it is becoming “unbearable.”
Muhammad Radi, a worker at the Nile Cotton Ginning Company in Minya, said on Friday that when the management of the privatized firm refused to hand out the appropriate annual raises required by the government and eventually moved the factory some 8 hours away.
“We were promised that all the allowances would be effective [last] October and all the investor really cared about was making money and selling the land,” Radi began, “he transferred people to a town that is 8 hours away without giving travel allowances and leaving their families behind. He was trying to make it unbearable so we would leave.”
The worker says that despite these efforts, a majority of workers have continued to arrive on the job, leaving their families behind and struggling to make ends meet.
Cairo has been the scene recently of an increasing number of national labor meetings, like Friday’s conference, with workers across the country continuing to demand their rights. Strike leaders from factories in rural areas are coming together to show solidarity with their fellow workers elsewhere.
“We must come together and be one united front of workers if this struggle is going to continue and create real movement and change. It is time for all workers to realize the importance of working together in different areas,” one outspoken worker said before the meeting dispersed.