Reprinted by permission of Ray Abernathy. Ray's website is available at: http://www.rayabernathy.com
In the recent “winter of labour discontent” in Egypt there were more than 250 strikes , work stoppages and sit-ins involving about 250,000 workers. But, according to journalist Jano Charbel, none was more dramatic than a sleep-in by female workers at textile plant in the Nile Delta.
The plant had been 60 percent privatized to Indonesian and Indian investors, who were threatening to cut production. The wages of the workers, mainly women, had been frozen for 10 years at 150 pounds a month (about $30 U.S. dollars). Now many would lose their jobs. After their shift ended, the women in their veils staged a sleep-in with their babies. The company agreed to continue production, with no workers to be laid off and wages would not be lowered. Six workers would had been fired were returned to work.
According to another journalist, Hossam el–Hamalawy, the labour uprisings were “sparked by frustrated workers,” not by any outside forces, and women were prime leaders of the movement.
Writing last March in Middle East Report, el-Hamalawy described how women among the 24,000 workers at Mahalla al-Kubra’s Misr Spinning and Weaving Complex instigated the first strike last December by stopping their machines and marching over to where the men were still working, chanting, “Where are the men? Here are the women.”
Charbel and el-Hamalawy, who is also fiery blogger (www.Arabawy.org) were both born in Cairo and at age 30 are part of an aggressive new independent press corps credited with creating unprecedented media coverage that helped spread the strikes.
“What was different about these strikes was that they were bigger, more widespread, and were around issues that could be generalized, ” el-Hamalawy says. “Each strike was a model for the next.”
El-Hamalawy adds that among the common issues were delayed bonuses, the increasing privatization of all Egyptian industries, an uproar over sham union elections and local working conditions. Government response to the strikes was restrained, he says, because Egyptian President Honsi Mubarak is trying to pave the way for his son to succeed him and a constitutional amendment to aid that succession was coming up in March.
“Government was going through a critical stage and an increasingly independent press also helped,” he says, adding that press coverage let other workers know they could be win after the first 4-day strike yielded the promised bonuses, increases in food allowances and some medical services.
Charbel covered the government-controlled union elections in 2006 and reported that, according the Non Governmantal Organizations (NGOs) monitoring the elections, “they were the most foul in history.”
“More than 12,000 people were barred from becoming candidates,” he says, “among them members of parties opposed to the government, members of the Moslem Brotherhood, and even people who just wore beards. Then there were many cases of outright vote rigging and voter fraud. ”
Explaining that workplace unions and 23 general unions representing various trades are all parts of a single, government-controlled union, the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), Charbel says the goal of the Federation is to restrict and confine workers.
“No strike has ever been authorized by the ETUF, membership is mandatory and dues are one to two pounds per month, part of which goes into a strike funds workers have never been able to use. Taxi drivers are in another kind of union and every three years when they renew their lcienses they have to cough up several hundred pounds.”
Professional workers in Egypt are not members of the Federation, but belong to their own professional associations. But the success of workers in the trade unions is inspiring professionals to take action. Just this week, 25,000 teachers employed by El Azhar, a nationwide public school system, walked out because they were left out of pay adjustments which were part of a government decree outlawing private tutoring.
El-Hamalawy contrasts the Egyptian union movement with the U.S. movement when he wryly observes, “A big difference between here and the U.S. is that your people are trapped within the boundaries of legalism. Here, every strike is illegal.”
Note: a version of this report was published earlier in the AFL-CIO news blog.