Tag: workers

5000 textile workers on strike in Alexandria

Posted on By 3arabawy

From Ikhwan Web:

Five thousand workers of the Alexandria-based United Arab and Polvara Spinning and Weaving Co. staged a labor strike, starting from last Saturday, protesting at not increasing shares, discriminating between workers and executives, not paying profits, canceling incentives for working on Fridays and sick leaves and not excluding advisors and those on pension.
The strike included workers of the first, second, fourth and fifth shifts, to be joined later by the third shift workers who broke the company gate and joined their colleagues in the strike.

Textile strikes continue

Posted on By 3arabawy

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that 270 textile workers at Mansoura-España garments factory have started their second strike in less than one month.

The workers are demanding, according to the paper, their unpaid February salary, their “social raises” which have not been paid since 1995 (Jeeez!!), and their Labor Day grants which the management stopped paying since 2002!!!

There is strong female presence in the garments’ factories labor force in general. It’s heart warming for me to find out not only thousands of them are taking part in the strike movement, but also (according to the interviews I conducted in Mahalla, Kafr el-Dawar, and chats I had with labor activists in Cairo) the female workers have tended to be more militant than their male colleagues.

In the case of Ghazl el-Mahalla December strike for example three thousand female workers from the garments factory stormed other sections of the company that had male colleagues who haven’t gone on strike yet, and started chanting “El-regalla fein?! el-hareem ahom!” (Here are the women! So where are the men?!) Their colleagues, feeling ashamed, joined the strike.

I wonder if the plight and the resistance of the female garments workers are ever discussed by those posh feminists of Suzan Mubarak’s National Council for Women.