workers archives — Page 183 of 484

Activists visit striking workers in Tanta factory

Posted on 10/07/200901/01/2021 By 3arabawy

In a show of support, a delegation from the Tadamon movement visited the workers on strike at the Tanta Flax and Oil Company this week.
Security forces at the gate tried to prevent the activists from entering, but striking workers threatened to break the gate if the delegation was not allowed through.
As strikes and sit-ins at the factory continue, foreign journalists have reportedly been denied access to factory grounds by security forces.
Dalia Moussa, of the Tadamon movement, said security forces sent them on a wild goose chase around the gates the same way they did with the journalists.
The strike that entered its second month is facing a stagnant phase; the administration still refuses to negotiate with the 900 workers staging a sit-in just inside the factory’s gate.
“The workers told us they miss the machines, they want to go back to work,” Moussa said. “They also said that they would stay on strike for as long as it takes.”
The workers are calling for rehiring nine colleagues who were fired, including two syndicated workers, their share of the factory’s profits of the past five years, higher meal expenses and better work conditions.
According to Moussa, the workers were chanting anti-privatization slogans.
Abdullah Al-Kakey, the Saudi investor that bought the factory, is allegedly unwilling to negotiate with the workers.
The workers allege that the investor might have a hidden agenda that does not serve the factory’s interests. Al-Kakey bought the company’s other 10 factories scattered in Egypt, among other assets, for LE 83 million.
“One of the recently built factories is worth LE 60 million alone,” Safwat Michel, a spokesman for the workers, told Daily News Egypt in a previous interview in Tanta.
Moussa stressed that visits help the workers’ strike as well as garner media attention.
“They seemed enduring and in high spirits, but who knows for how long,” she added.
However, Moussa maintained that it is more important for workers to continue to support each other, even if individual demands were met.
While Michel warns of an escalation in the strikes, Moussa remains skeptical.
“The syndicate is trying to control any possible escalation and they might succeed in doing so,” she added.

Today, Friday, there will be a solidarity conference held in Cairo’s Tagammu Party HQ, 6pm.

Govt unions under scrutiny

Posted on 09/07/200904/01/2021 By 3arabawy

My article in Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition:

In its 2009 Annual Survey of Trade Union Violations issued this week, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) accused the government of “bloody repression and arrests of union activists” in Mahalla, imposing draconian restrictions on industrial actions that make “legal strikes … virtually impossible,” as well as “heavily curtailing the right to form and join trade unions.”
The report also accused the state-backed Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions (EGFTU) of having “close relations with the (ruling) National Democratic Party” and of weak performance in both collective bargaining and in supporting industrial actions. The situation is bleaker, according to the report, in the private sector where “There is very little scope for collective bargaining,” while in the export-oriented Special Economic Zones (SEZs) “investment companies … are exempted from complying with legal clauses relating to labor organizing, thus depriving workers of the right to set up local union committees.”
Although it criticized the continued “barring of unions from engaging in political activities,” the ITUC report mentioned “two pieces of good news” including a halt to the state crackdown on the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS), a leading labor rights NGO, which resumed its activities last July, in addition to the launching of the independent Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees last December—the first independent trade union in Egypt since 1957.
The CTUWS, however, said in a statement it was under the government spotlight recently once more, with renewed harassment against its director Kamal Abbas, who was interrogated and kept for an hour in police custody at the Cairo International Airport. The latter almost missed the plane he was catching to Brussels to attend an ITUC regional conference on 2 July.
The situation is tenser with the Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees (URETAE), whose activists are facing a public campaign by the state-backed EGFTU officials in the press and on TV. Officials have been routinely denouncing the URETAE, declared on 20 December 2008 following the endorsement of around 30,000 property tax collectors in 29 provinces, as an “illegal” entity. Union activists, according to Abdel Qader Nada, a leading member of the union and one of the leaders of the three-month strike in 2007, have been subject to a harassment campaign from both the management and the state-backed officials of the General Union of Bank, Insurance and Financial Workers. “Whenever we try fund raising for the union, we get investigated for collected ‘illegal funds,’” Nada told Al-Masry Al-Youm. “That’s a serious charge.”
URETAE lawyer Haitham Mohammadein notes that the government still deducts the monthly membership fees of the EGFTU from the property tax collectors’ monthly salaries, though more than 35,000 civil servants have already resigned from the EGFTU to join URETAE. Moreover, “Physical force is now being used against the independent trade unionists,” Mohammadein was alarmed.
“Two colleagues at least were assaulted by the (EGFTU) officials,” Nada accused. “Ahmad Abul Yazid, the head of the union in Gharbeia and Ahmad Abdel Sabour from Sharqiya were both beaten up by the government union thugs. They were insulted and slapped on the faces, pushed and kicked.
“We welcome international solidarity from the ITUC and any other labor unions,” Nada said. “The (Egyptian) government is determined to break us.”
Attempts by Al-Masry Al-Youm to get comment from Hussein Megawer, the head of the EGFTU and Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi failed, as their offices never returned the calls.
The ITUC is the largest global labor federation, representing 168 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national affiliates.

Striker

Posted on 08/07/200901/02/2021 By 3arabawy

“We are staging a peaceful strike,” said Abdel Tawab Sheeha, 59, who has been working in the Tanta Flax and Oil Company for 39 years. “The Egyptian government doesn’t understand the culture of peaceful strikes however. They will force us to do other things, to do violence to be heard. They are the ones to blame. No one is hearing our voices out here.”