Around 1000 workers at the Telephone Equipment Manufacturing Company in Helwan are on strike since yesterday, demanding their annual shares of profits. The strikers took a number of the management’s engineers hostages on Sunday and released them at night. The strike continues as time of writing.
Tag: workers
Ghazl Shebeen strikers score VICTORY!
The workers at Ghazl Shebeen el-Kom suspended their strike last night, after the Indian management finally agreed to pay the strikers’ their rightly deserved annual bonus.
UPDATE: Here’s a DNE report by Sarah Carr:
Workers at the Indorama textiles factory in Shibeen El-Kom have ended their 11-day strike after winning their demand for payment of an annual bonus.
“The strike has ended and workers are now returning to work,” electrical engineer Ehab Shalaby told Daily News Egypt Monday morning.
The factory’s workforce of roughly 4,000 workers downed tools on March 5, 2009 in protest at Indorama chairman Narindra Malbany’s refusal to grant them an annual bonus paid in March each year.
Malbany said that the “global economic crisis” prevented Indorama from paying the annual bonus.
“Malbany has signed a written pledge in the presence of manpower minister Aisha Abdel-Hady promising that all the bonuses will be paid by Thursday morning,” Shalaby said.
The news was confirmed by Indorama’s administrative manager Emad Abdel Khaliq.
This strike was the 96th industrial protest staged by workers since the factory was privatized and bought by Indonesian-based Indorama in 2006.
Egyptian law bans strikes, says Mubarak’s chief legislator
Moufid Shehab, the Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, according to El-Badeel, admits:
The law in Egypt bans strikes, and this is against the international treaties we signed. But strikes must have regulations so as not to affect the vital state facilities. There are sectors where strikes should not be allowed.
We need to remember, every single strike that took place in the country, from December 2006 till today is “illegal” according to Mubarak’s laws.