Around 800 miners in Zagazig staged a sit in on Sunday, accusing the Sharqiya province governor of not paying them their bonuses for three years. The miners threatened to descend on Cairo, and demonstrate in front of Mubarak’s house, if their demands are not met within 10 days.
Tag: workers
Mahalla textile workers slam their General Union officials
The General Union for Textile Workers should impeach its local branch at Ghazl el-Mahalla Textile company (which stood against the December strike) by 15 February or at least 13,000 workers will resign en masse from the government-dominated union body, a delegation from the factory told the General Union officials in Cairo on Monday.
[Above: Photo I took of a Ghazl el-Mahalla Textile worker denouncing his union officials during the meeting.]
I attended the meeting. I’ll write a more detailed posting tomorrow, as my DSL is down and dial-up is frustrating. Apologies.
UPDATE: Still without DSL, so I’m filing this report from a cyber-coffee shop.
The workers arrived at the General Union’s HQ in Shobra el-Mazallat around 11am, in two buses carrying roughly 200 workers. They were met by the head of the General Union, Sa’eed el-Gohari, who claimed he had not been notified of the meeting and that he heard of it from a journalist a couple of days ago.
[Above: Photo I took of Ghazl el-Mahalla heroes arriving at their General Union in the morning]
I was told by the workers that originally they were planning to come in five bus loads, but State Security had embarked on a vicious intimidation campaign, that included summoning labor activists to the SS offices in Mahalla, directing threats against them and their families.
Before they went into the conference hall, there were lots of humming, talking, angry comments, few shouts, and some union officials tried to discredit the strikers as “liars,” only to be met with a flood of accusations from the workers about the corruption of the union. “You did not stand by us when we were striking,” shouted the workers back at Seddiq Siyam, the head of the Ghazl el-Mahalla Textile Union Committee. “You left us all alone. You do not represent us. You are a fraud.”
In a stormy meeting, the workers confronted both their General Union and Factory Union Committee officials. They accused the union bureaucracy of not caring about their well being, they accused the local branch of corruption, siding with the management during the strike, as well as winning their seats by security vote-rigging.
[Above: Photo I took of a Ghazl el-Mahalla worker, slamming his union officials.]
They handed in a petition, signed by roughly 13,000 workers demanding the dissolution of the union, and new elections.
The General Union officials took it. Initially, they refused to give the workers an ultimatum for when they’ll reply back to their demands… The workers decided to give them only till the 15 Feb. If the union is not dissolved, then the petition signatories will resign from the union, stop paying their membership fees, and launch an independent labor union, for the first time in the country’s history since 1957.
[Above: Photo by Mathew Carrington, of labor activist Sayyed Habib handing in the petitions to the General Union officials]
Although all Union officials who sat on the podium were NDP members… when asked, el-Gohari avoided answering the question, saying trade unionism had nothing to do with political parties and that he served all workers alike.
After several attempts to dodge requests for knowing when he is gonna reply back to the workers, Gohari said the General Union was to have an emergency meeting on 15 Feb.
[Above: Photo by Tara Todras-Whitehill, of Sa’eed el-Gohari and other NDP-affiliated Union officials, in a dialogue with the Mahalla workers.]
The head of the union took the petitions, so as to count them. Later, the union officials claimed the signatures were invalid, so the workers, angrily stormed out of the General Union, by 4:30pm, and went to the Menyet el-Serg police station, and filed a report against the Union, in a move aiming to prove legally that they had handed the petitions.
Before they stormed out, the workers spent hours leveling accusations against their union officials… and detailing the tough working conditions they operate under, including lack of medical treatment for work injuries, the ultra-low salaries they receive. (I met workers who worked for the company for 11 years, and their basic salary was LE206. Another one worked for 23 years, and his salary is LE310!!!)
In other developments, I’m still trying to confirm this, but I’m told more than 30,000 Textile workers from the private sector companies who’ve been lobbying with little success for union representation for more than a decade, announced Monday evening they are establishing an association under the name “The Society for Private Sector Workers.” I’m still unclear about the nature of this association, but as far as I understood those workers lobbied hard, so they managed gain license from the Ministry of Social Affairs to establish an “association with an NGO status. It is not a labor union, but it is one step towards a collective organizational structure,” a leftist source told me.
UPDATE: Here’s a report in DSE by journalist Liam Stack.
Monday: Mahalla textile workers demand their pro-govt union dissolved
It is happening…
In what could be the biggest challenge to the state-controlled General Federation of Trade Unions since its foundation in 1957, a delegation of 100 workers from Ghazl el-Mahalla Textile factory will show up on the door step of the General Union of Textile Workers in Cairo (located 327 Shobra – Mazzallat St.) on Monday 10 am, armed with a petition signed by 14,000 workers demanding the dissolution of their Factory Union Committee, after the latter took a pro-management stand during the December strike.
[Above: Photo of Ghazl el-Mahalla Textile workers staging mock funeral for their management, during the December strike. Click on the photo to watch a slide-show by Nasser Nouri.]
The campaign to impeach the factory union representatives started shortly after the 27,000-strong labor strike ended in victory, despite the open conspiring from the union bureaucrats against the strike and the factory occupation. According to Law 35/1976 (Egyptian Labor Unions Law), the required percentage is 50% +1 to impeach the union officials. (The workers, according to a Socialist source, have actually managed to collect 19,000 signatures.) This means the General Union is obliged to impeach the Factory Union Committee officials now.
If met with refusal, the Ghazl el-Mahalla Textile workers have clearly stated they are resigning en masse from the General Federation, and will be launching an independent labor union body.
Ghazl El-Mahalla is probably the biggest factory in Egypt, where 27,000 workers work shoulder to shoulder, and enjoy a historical fame for labor militancy. The leadership of the December strike, however, was composed mainly of young workers in their 20s and 30s. More interestingly, women played a central role in the strike, according to a Revolutionary Socialist activist I met tonight who’s connected to the December strike. The young age of the strike leaders can mean they lack the experience, but at the same time this can still be a plus, as they have not seen the catastrophic defeats and brutal crackdowns of the 1980s, when General Zaki Badr’s troops used to open live ammunition on strikers. They are fresh blood, who were thrown into battle last December… and they won… the sweet taste of victory is still in their mouths as they now take on their General Federation.
If Ghazl el-Mahalla workers manage to score a victory against their union bureaucracy, this will encourage other workers to step in. It is no secret there is mass frustration among the ranks of workers in other sectors (like the railways) against their union leaders (who mostly got their seats via vote rigging and security connections).
Whatever the outcome of Monday’s battle, this is just the beginning of a long-awaited fight against the General Federation–the regime’s arm within with the working class. And it couldn’t have come at a more critical time, where the Federation is already in a shaky position.
The General Federation cannot claim anymore it is the “representative of Egypt’s workers.” The Federation’s membership today stands roughly at 3.7 million workers– only 20 to 25% of Egypt’s working class. The vast majority of the workers are outside the govt-controlled union structures at the present time… and they don’t have any representative body.
The General Federation is facing international isolation, after repeated requests to join international labor bodies were refused because of obvious lack of independence and the draconian restrictions the Federation itself imposes on the right to strike.
Shaking the echelons of the General Federation means drastic implications to the regime:
The ongoing constitutional amendments circus will need to be ceremonially endorsed by the Federation to add the necessary facade of legitimacy the regime needs. In other words, Mubarak needs Hussein Megawer (the sec-gen of the Federation) to go out in public and say: “In the name of Egypt’s workers, we support the amendments Mr. President.” If the Federation is shaken now, this can indirectly affect the constitutional amendments process.
The regime depends strongly on the union bureaucracy for mobilization. Those buses that were shipping in the “NDP supporters” to electoral posts during the November 2005 parliamentary elections, to rig the vote in the provinces, were carrying no ones but poor public sector workers, mobilized by the union bureaucrats who are closely affiliated with the NDP.
The “mass demos” that the NDP mobilizes, whether to cheer the president’s visit to some town, or to protest the Iraq war in the Cairo Stadium in February 2003, were also mobilized by the unions.
In the past, the General Federation played a crucial role in mobilizing (together with the Arab Socialist Union, the NDP’s grand daddy) mass pro-Nasser demos following the 1967 defeat, and in countering the January 1977 “Bread Intifada”… providing the successive military regimes with an arm inside the working class, and with a vital tool for pro-government street mobilization.
If there is, as many believe in Egypt, a family power succession scheme in brewing, then our elite cannot afford losing the General Federation, in order to ensure no troubles happen in the factories or the industrial centers.
The Ghazl el-Mahalla Textile workers are asking for your solidarity. If you are in Cairo, please show up on Monday 10 am in front of the General Union for Textile Workers, as they present their petition.
See you there…