20 January, 2009

Telemasr workers demonstrate

El-badeel reports that 140 workers at the Telemasr branch in Ismailiyya and 200 at the main branch in Cairo demonstrated on Sunday against the decision to partially close the factory and leave 300 workers without work and only half the pay. Workers have protested previously against the transferal of workers from the Cairo branch to Ismailiyya and attempts to sell parts of the equipment and land in Cairo. One of the workers where also forced to chose between being fired and accepting early retirement, after his name was mentioned in a previous article in el-Badeel.

The privatization of Telemasr in the late 90's was marred by corruption charges and led to loss of jobb security and decreased wages for its employees, as in many other similar cases in Egypt. I was working on a story about this when the war on Gaza started, and hopefully will get back to it soon...

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