30 January, 2009

Updates on Railway struggle

El-Badeel reported yesterday that the management of Egyptian National Railways is preparing a "new plan" for reforming the wage structure of the company, in response to recent industrial actions taken by drivers, technicians, and signal operators. (Previos posts: Here, here and here.) The head of the company sais he has asked workers in all the sections of the company to present their demands in "order of priority" so that they can be taken into consideration "within the limits of the budget and resources provided by the ministry of transport."

After two strikes in less than a week and growing militancy in several sections of the workforce, the management is clearly under intense pressure to make some sort of concessions to avoid further disruptions of train traffic - but at the same time they want to avoid encouraging further action by appearing to give in to the workers demands. As a result they are resorting to the same sort of vague promises that the workers have been hearing for two years now. I doubt it will satisfy many of them.

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