Tag: workers

Some notes on the 6 April ‘general strike’

Posted on By 3arabawy

Over the past week email messages and blog postings have been circulating calling for a general strike on 6 April. If this happens, then it will be the first time in history that a general strike is organized by emails and facebook messages.

I’m afraid this will NOT happen.

Don’t get me wrong. I think anyone who follows this blog knows well I see no other way to overthrow the Mubarak’s dictatorship but a general strike. But what we have here is something different.

What is confirmed up till now is that Ghazl el-Mahalla, the biggest textile mill in the ME with its 27,000-strong labor force, is going on strike 6 April. There will be series of protests and solidarity actions planned in some industrial centers as well as protests by political activists in Cairo and other provinces…

But the call for general strike has another story… The opposition groups got together to discuss how to support the Mahalla strikers in April.. and that’s when Magdi Hussein, of the Islamist-leaning Labor Party, made this quixotic call for a general strike, and Abdel Halim Qandeel of Kefaya followed suit.. Hussein and his group, which has tiny presence in the political arena, have been known for such quixotic and highly sensationalist calls for general strikes (that never happened) since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. This is adventurism that even borders on political opportunism.

General strikes cannot be organized by basically issuing a call via emails, facebook messages and blog postings.. General strikes are organized when you have grassroots activists in the workplaces part of a national network that can push for such general strike from below.. not by some call dropping from the sky via an email from elitist groups. We neither have a mass revolutionary party rooted in the workplaces that can execute such general strike, nor do we have yet the national labor union that parallels the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions and can push for such national action (like what happened in South Korea, Poland and elsewhere).

We have to focus comrades, and we cannot utter calls for actions that we are incapable of achieving on the ground.. coz the price of such quixotic actions will be high, in terms of demoralizing activists and supporters whose hopes are skyrocketing for a general strike and we can risk losing our credibility in the eyes of the public.

So again, let’s focus. Mahalla is confirmed to go on strike, so let’s channel our energies around this event which will have huge impact, if it succeeds, on the political arena in Egypt and the region.

Unions in a dire state, says MP as more workers protest

Posted on By 3arabawy

Michaela Singer reports:

Employees and union members of a bank and a holding company staged a double demonstration on Sunday outside the parliament to protest against what they described as “prejudice” and “persecutory” behavior taken against them by their respective work officials.
Muhammad Abdel Hamid, an employee of the Masraf United Bank and a member of the Bankers Union, told Daily News Egypt, “I am here to present my complaints to Members of Parliament. The Union has frozen my membership because I dared to take up workers’ demands.”
In a written statement to the PA, Abdel Hamid has accused the union board of conspiring with the General Union of Banks to prevent employees’ rights from being implemented, including the annual salary increase mandated by a 1987 law, which was later ratified in 2006.
Workers from the contracting company Atlas were also present to deliver their complaints. Yasser Muhammad Yassin, who has worked for Atlas Holding Company for 14 years, told Daily News Egypt, “I have been discriminated against because I took workers demands to the authorities. I have a Masters degree in business, and was an accounting advisor [for the warehouses], and after I complained they demoted me to accounts secretary and denied me my annual raise.
“My colleague, Hussein Sorour, who is here with me today, was moved to the Alexandria branch because he took my side.”
In a written statement previously presented to the Atlas General Union, workers demanded full insurance and pension funds as well as paid holidays, travel expenses and over-time pay of 100 percent rather than the current 40 percent. They also demanded the holding company to implement a system for an annual wage raise.
Standing with them was MP Muhammad Abdel Aziz Shabaan, who promised the employees that he would present their cases to the PA to ensure action is taken.
“We will have to study their demands and find out what is relevant and what is not. The assembly will hopefully meet next week to discuss these affairs among the issue of wages in general,” he said.
“However, what I can say now is that the labor unions are in a poor state, and are no longer active. There are some real leaders in companies and factories, but when they try to act on behalf of their colleagues they are inevitably persecuted by officials.”