Tag: workers

Fayoum trade unionist sacked

Posted on 05/04/200716/01/2021 By 3arabawy

Thirty-four-year-old Ashraf Abdel Wanis is a father of four, who’s been working at the administrative affairs department of the state-owned Fayoum Sugar factory for nine years. His monthly basic salary is LE221.66, which goes up to LE638 with the bonuses and allowances.

The company has 500 workers on contracts, and another 200 on a seasonal basis. The factory works at its full capacity, during the sugar beads season, which lasts between February and June.

The factory witnessed a two-day strike in June 2006, during which Ashraf and his colleagues played a leading role, over a number of demands including increasing the LE1 daily food allowance to LE5, and forming a branch for the General Union for Food Industries at the factory, among other demands (There were 14 demands in total). The management agreed to increase the daily food allowance only to LE2, and allowed the workers to form a Factory Union Committee, whose elections took place last fall, promising to look into the rest of the demands that had to do with workers’ shares of profits. Ashraf managed to win a union seat.

The management, using carrots and sticks, managed to impose an engineer by the name Khaled Abu Bakr as the Factory Union Committee’s president. He, together with the management, have been launching a witch-hunt against Ashraf and others involved in last year’s strike, especially as the latter were lobbying for increasing the shares of workers in the annual profits made by the company, as well as increasing the transportation and housing allowances.

On 5 March, Ashraf was transferred to another department within the factory. The manamgent suspended him from his job on 10 March, and sacked him finally on 22 March, alleging he had not shown up for work without medical notice.

In an interview to Al-Massa’ia on 21 March, however, Khaled Abu Bakr, the pro-management head of the Factory Union Committee stated that “Ashraf Abdel Wanis was transferred to a disciplinary board for investigating his role in agitating the workers about profit shares.”

Ashraf is filing a lawsuit, and planning to stage a sit-in, together with other trade unionists at the General Union for Food Industries, in Nasr City, next week if the Labor Ministry does not get involved to revoke the management’s dismissal decree.

Govt crackdown on Mahalla labor activists

Posted on 04/04/200716/01/2021 By 3arabawy

I received a very worrying statement from Kamal Abbas of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services… After cracking down on the Center’s branch in Naga’a Hammadi, accusing its directors of “communism” and “spreading the culture of strikes,” the Ministry of Social Security sent a senior official on Tuesday evening to the Center’s branch in Mahalla and threatened to close it down, according to Kamal.

“It’s the same scenario of Naga’a Hammadi, being repeated again in Mahalla,” Kamal told me. “A wave of security crackdowns on the labor movement is to be expected.”

The Hisham Mubarak Law Center called for a meeting this Thursday 5pm, where activists will be discussing a solidarity campaign with the CTUWS. The center is located at: 1 Souq el-Tawfiqiya St., off Ramses Street.

Resisting our rulers

Posted on 04/04/200716/01/2021 By 3arabawy

The 5th Cairo Anti-War Conference’s final statement is available in Arabic.

And here’s a report about the Conference from the Guardian’s Comment is Free:

The rich and powerful have their conferences and we who oppose them have ours. For example, some very rich and powerful characters were meeting in Saudi Arabia last week.
But as the tyrants met in Riyadh, delegates from 17 different countries gathered in Egypt for the Fifth International Cairo Conference incorporating the Third Middle Eastern Social Forum under the slogan: “Building an international coalition for resistance” – resistance against colonialism, globalisation, imperialism and Zionism.
There was a lot to discuss: the catastrophe of Iraq, the clear build-up against Iran, the on-going agony of the Palestinian people and the almost universal despotism which characterises the Middle East.
The conference met in a country on the brink of revolt. Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt as a police state for over 26 years, has recently increased his people’s suffering. Last December he announced changes in the constitution to “rid Egypt of socialist principles launched in the 1960s (and) also seek to create a more favorable atmosphere for foreign investments”.
This was the usual neo-liberal bullshit for slashing wages and forcing people to work harder. The workers resisted with massive strikes. Some 20,000 mobilized to defend their bonuses at the Ghazl el-Mahal factory in Mahalla el-Kubra, north of Cairo, 8,000 at Kafr al-Dawwar factory did the same, followed by similar strikes at Zifta and Shibin al-Kum in Alexandria.