From Reuters:
Contractors in Dubai have raised wages of laborers by up to 20% following strikes this month over salaries linked to the declining dollar, the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) reported on Friday.
Tag: workers
18 & 19 January 1977: The Lost Revolution
The Bread Uprising that shook Egypt’s urban towns on the 18th and 19th of January, 1977, is always wrongly treated in the mainstream media as an “Uprising of thieves,” quoting President Sadat’s description of the events, with emphasis on the violence and the looting that accompanied the people’s uprising.
After Mahalla triggered the Winter of Labor Discontent, and once more pushed for a Hot Industrial Autumn, some on the Left today cannot help but drawing parallels between the current situation and the time leading to Jan ’77.
The preconditions that preceded Bread Intifada will be the subject of a future posting; the events were the climax of a rising social movement from February 1968, that culminated in the two-day uprising that was to be crushed by Sadat’s army in 1977.
In this posting, however, I’ll focus on 1976 onwards, and the organized working class movement vs. the rioting which was mainly conducted by the urban poor. The resources used are parts of the MA Thesis I wrote eight years ago.
![[19-1-1977] Demonstrators protesting increased food prices regroup on a rubble strewn street in Cairo Wednesday, after battling the Central Security Forces (Photo by AP)](https://arabawy.org/wp-content/uploads//2007/11/Jan-1977-Bread-Intifada-e1427489793383.jpg)
Tax officers demonstrate
I received the following report from journalist and friend Jano Charbel…
The real estate tax employees remain steadfast in their demands of affiliation to the ministry of finance, or at least equity with their co-workers – the general tax, customs tax, and sales tax employees – who are affiliated to the ministry, and on average, earn 5x as much as these real estate tax employees.
Over 1000 real estate tax employees demonstrated outside the headquarters of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation on downtown Cairo’s Gala’ Street. They came from a number of Governorates across Egypt – Daqahlia, Bani Suef, Port Said, Demietta, Giza, etc. Hundreds of CSF troops cordoned the demonstrating tax employees on the sidewalk outside the ETUF headquarters . They are sleeping in there and are expected to continue with their demo until their grievances are addressed.
Chants at this demo on Tuesday (Nov. 13) called upon Egypt’s 55,000 real estate tax workers to resume strike action by not collecting taxes – until their demands are met. The ETUF’s Hussein Megawer is said to have conducted some sort of negotiations with the strike leaders/worker delegates.
Some photos of the protest, below, taken by Jano…
