Workers to protest privatization, demand minimum wage

Here's a (very) quick translation of parts of a statement (via Hossam al-Hamalawy) being circulated by several workers' groups in Egypt, calling for a demonstration in downtown Cairo on April 3: 

 

"We want to reach to poverty line

Stop the politics of privatization

Under these slogans, the labour and civil groups that have signed this statement will organize a protest meeting outside the cabinet, at 11 am on April 3, demanding a minimum monthly wage of no less than 1200 egyptian pounds, to be raised annually according to the rate of inflation, as well as an end to the waste of public funds through the politics of privatization."

(The statement goes on to criticize the national council of wages - consisting of representatives of the government, unions, and business organizations - for not fulfilling its role and making sure that wages keep pace with prices...) 

"Down with the politics of making workers poor, destroying Egyptian industry, and sacrificing workers rights in order to attract foreign capital - that never comes because of corruption, political tyranny, the imposition of emergency laws and the absence of democracy. 

What has the politics of selling and wasting public funds in the name of privatization brought except more destruction through kicking the workers out and halting production in order to sell the land of the companies and factories, after first using it as a security to obtain loans from the banks?

We call for all wage workers in Egypt to join the demonstration in order to defend our right to life.

Workers Preparatory Committee

The independent tax collectors union URETA

Postal workers committee 

Mahalla Textile Workers League

The Egyptian center for economic and social rights

Journalists without rights

Sons of the earth

Tadamon

Al-Hilali foundation for freedom

Workers union of Suez

Railway Workers

Workers Solidarity Committee

Nasr Car Workers

The Workers preparatory committee in Alexandria"

Copenhagen Mass Climate Protest in Pictures

Click the photo above for a set on flickr from the massive "planet first, people first" demonstration in Copenhagen this Saturday. Around 100.000 people took part in the march, demanding "climate justice" and "system change, not climate change." The march was peaceful, but Danish police intervened and detained almost 1000 people on the pretext of arresting a few masked "black block" activists who threw one or two stones against a bank and the Danish foreign ministry. Stupid, but hardly "a riot", as Naomi Klein points out.

Tomorrow, protesters plans to 'reclaim power.' (Note that Tadzio Müller, one of the organizers of Wednesdays march, which have been authorized by Danish police, was arrested shortly after the press conference.)

"Boss-napping" ends peacefully

Hisham Omar Abdel-Halim reports for al-Masry al-Youm: "Workers at the privatized Telephones Equipment Company, in Helwan, south of Cairo wrapped up a 12-day sit-in during which they held company board and syndicate members captive for ten hours. Security forces, which had quickly surrounded the area, failed to convince the company's roughly 1200 employees to release the captives. Frustrated workers only agreed to free the men after prominent MP Mustafa Bakri assured them they would receive unpaid salaries and bonuses by 18 October. Over the course of the negotiations, Bakri made a telephone call to Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel Hadi, putting the conversation on speakerphone for workers to hear. Abdel Hadi assured them over the phone that they would continue to receive their salaries for the next three months."

QIZ workers take to the street in Mahalla

Via Mohammed Maree and Hossam el-Hamalawy: A video showing textile workers from the Abou Sebae factory in the QIZ (Qualified Industrial Zone) in Mahalla demonstrating in front of factory owner Ismail Abul Sebae’s house demanding their delayed salaries. The clip shows workers chanting "left, right, we're coming to you Ismail" and "There is no God but God, Ismail is the enemy of God."

According to Mahalla blogger Mohammed Maree 3500 workers took part in the protest. They tried to take to the streets yesterday but were stoped by central security forces and state security officers who promised they would get their salaries in the afternoon. Instead, they entered the factory again only to find a notice that they were obliged to take 15 days unpaid vacation. Today they organized a demonstration that stopped for half an hour outside the factory owners house before continuing to the City Council, paralyzing traffic on the main street al-Bahr until security forces intervened to stop the protest.

Mohammed Maree also reports that a police officer tried to take his camera while he was covering the protest, and threatened to issue another arrest order against him (Mohammed was arrested after the demonstrations in Mahalla on 6 and 7 April 2008, and detained for three months).  

Tax Collectors Repeat Historical Sit-in

Egypt's real estate tax collectors have begun a strike in defense of their independent union. Hossam el-Hamalawy is twittering from their sit-in in Hussein Hegazy street outside the cabinet, where hundreds are chanting against the state-controlled unions - just like they did for 11 days some 20 months ago.

This reminds me of a remark made by Kamal Abu Eita, the head of the free union, during a conference organized by Tadamon just before I left Egypt in June: "Everyone is saying that we created the first independent union in Egypt since 1957. But every union is independent, and controlled by it's members - if it isn't, it's not a union. So we have in fact established the first union in Egypt since the 50'

Given the extent of state manipulation and control of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation I believe this statement was correct. When security intervenes to purge "radical" workers from even the lowest levels of the union hierarchy, which often happened in the last union elections in 2006, unions cease to be unions and turn into branches of the state.

This is why this is probably going to be an intense confrontation, where more is at stake than the fight over who is going to control the social fund - the final outcome this struggle may determine the viability of the future existence of the only real union in Egypt.

UPDATE: Hossam uploaded some pics here, and will post continuous updates and links (English and Arabic) here.

"We want to live"

A couple of hundred workers from the Nile Cotton Ginning Co. gathered outside the People's Assembly in downtown Cairo today, protesting cut's in their salaries that started in November last year and was followed by new cuts last month. The workers have been on strike since April 29. Some of the company's factories in Miniya has been closed, and workers are accusing the Egyptian owner (the company was privatized by the state in the late 90's) of trying to make a quick profit by selling off equipment and land, despite the fact that the company is making profits (workers base this claim on a financial report they say was published on March 31).

"We are victims of privatization," one worker called Mustapha told me. "We are not demanding any raise or anything, just our salaries. We are creating a profit, so where is our rights? We are not going to give up. We want to live!"

Update: More background is provided in a report by Sarah Carr from August last year.

More updates from Twitter: Sarah Carr says: "Nile Cotton worker says that security are trying to break up the protest on the pretext that they are not allowed to stay there overnight," while 3arabawy reports that "police is harassing photographers.i fear they might confiscate my camera."

Latest update from Sarah Carr: Workers forced to break up protest outside PA. Worker told me that Fatma Ramadan was manhandled by the police.

Postal worker detained for "inciting to strike"

More repression: As Hossam al-Hamalawy reported, a postal worker from Ismailiya has been detained on charges of "inciting a strike threatening the national economy". According to a statement published by the Center for Socialist Studies, Mamdouh Faza'e was arrested by state security after sending a fax to his bosses in Cairo in which he threatened with a strike unless temporary workers was employed on permanent contracts. The prosecutor has ordered his detention for 15 days for during the investigation, while labour lawyers maintain that Faza'e didn't break any law, that going on strike is a constitutional right, and that threatening to strike cannot be considered "incitement."

More on the postal workers:

* On Sunday, postal workers in Kafr el-Sheikh called for a national strike - starting Monday. This call came after the manager of the Egyptian Post Authority refused to meet a delegation of postal workers from several governorates despite the fact that "he himself had fixed the time for the meeting."

* Apparently, one of the grievances of the postal workers is that employees of the telecommunications authority earns 3 times as much, even though they belong to the same ministry. Another long-running dispute concerns the refusal of the management to give fixed contracts to workers employed after 2001.

* Today, "hundreds" of postal workers started an "open-ended" sit in in Kafr el-Sheikh. According to Al-Youm Al-Sabi'a the General Union of Postal Workers tried to convince the workers to cancel the protest.

Oil workers protest layoffs

Workers from the Egyptian Drilling Company, EDC (despite the name apparently 45% owned by a Danish company - the A.P Moller-Maersk Group) gathered outside to ministry of manpower in Nasr city today to protest being fired. The said the EDC stopped the operation of several wells and laid off hundreds of workers since January. While this might seem like a natural response to the declining oil price (but not exactly fair since these companies hardly shared their huge profits during last year's record peak in the oil price but are now asking the workers to pay the price of the recession), the workers also claimed that the EDC has been hiring new workers at lower wages and on temporary contracts during the same period. They demanded to be returned to work or receive just compensation.

As the workers were still gathering outside the gates, the minister - Aisha abdel Hadi - suddenly left the building in a car, which made some of them furious. "We came to talk to the minister and you smuggle her out in front of our eyes?" one man yelled to the security guards. Later, a ministry official (possible security) came out to talk to the workers, refusing to say his name. He told them that the situation was beyond the control of the government since this is a global crisis and "even in America 5 million workers has been laid off".

It's ironic how government officials will deny the impact of the global crisis on Egypt one day, while at the same time using it as an excuse to escape all responsibility to help workers who are losing their jobs because of it...

These workers feel betrayed by the employer, the union, and the government after spending 10-25 years working for this company "12 hours a day 6 days a week" and then suddenly being left with no income whatsoever. One of the workers, a 50 year old man named Hafez, showed a wound on his leg and an older scar on his shoulder that he said was from work injuries. He complained bitterly: "The company stole 18 years of my life, and now they are throwing me into the street."

UPDATE: Sarah Carr reports: "EDC petrol comp. management makes u-turn and agrees to pay compensation and renew contracts of dismissed workers." And a more detailed report by Sarah Carr can be found here).

Doctors to protest tomorrow

The Doctors Syndicate has called for protests in public hospitals in several governorates tomorrow, Tuesday, as well as a demonstration outside the People's Assembly in Downtown Cairo, in order to pressure the government to fulfill earlier financial promises. The "Doctors without rights" movement said their members will also join the protests. Two weeks ago a similar protest outside the People's Assembly was thwarted by security forces.

Mahalla prisoners on hungerstrike

Mahalla residents who were sentenced to jail by a security court after the demonstrations on 6 and 7 april last year has entered a hungerstrike, el-Badeel reports, protesting against maltreatment and abuse in the prison. According to a letter sent by them to el-Badeel, they have been targeted by daily beatings since their families announced their participation in the "6 april strike." A solidarity protest is being planned for Tuesday in front of the public prosecutors office, downtown Cairo.

"This country is on the brink of a revolution"

I visited the 10th of Ramadan industrial zone today and met some of the workers at Salemco Spinning, who have being staging a series of protests and threatened to block the Ismailiya road (as they did previously, in 2005) to get their salaries for February. Several production lines in the factory has been closed since January, but the workers also say their problems with the owners started long before the global economic crisis started, with hundreds being dismissed and others receiving arbitrary wage-cuts.

We had some problem locating the factory, since Salemco apparently has four factories in different locations in 10th of Ramadan city. As we stopped and asked for the way, a technician employed at another factory in the area gave us a long speech about the disastrous situation in the textile sector, with mass lay-offs and factories being closed down. He said he didn't use to care about politics but recently started reading the independent daily al-Doustor. "Where is the wage increased that Mubarak promised us last year?" he wanted to know. Then he went on to proclaim that "this country is on a brink of a revolution!"

That may still be an exaggeration. But I do believe that the situation in the textile industry and especially the industrial zones of Egypt is a severely under-reported story, even in the opposition media. Their isolated location and the almost complete lack of labour unions means that news about what's going on in places like 10th of Ramadan rarely reach Cairo - except when there is an actual strike that last more than a day. But tens of thousands of workers have been laid off in a few months - where do they all go?

609 labour protests in 2008

El-Badeel today published some statistics from the Land Center from Human Rights: During 2008 a total of 609 industrial actions occurred in Egypt, including 122 strikes. This is slightly less than 2007 but still far more than previous years. The true number of protests might be higher, since these numbers are based mainly on protests actually reported by media.

Egypt's struggling women

As a simple tribute on International Women's Day, here's a few pics from some of the social and political struggles that took part in Egypt during the last couple of years, where women often played central roles and sometimes proved to be more militant than the men.

In the Mahalla demonstrations on 6-7 April 2008:

And in the struggle of the Mahalla textile workers:

In the more than 9-month struggle of the Kafr al-Elou families for just compensation from the state after they were forcibly evicted from their homes:

In the strike of the real estate tax collectors in December 2007, leading to the founding of Egypt's first free union in more than 50 years:

During the 11-day sit-in outside the cabinet in downtown Cairo, many of the female tax collectors set up their own tents in order to be able to camp out in the street together with their male colleagues:

In the Student Day protest against education fees and security interventions on campuses:

And, of course, during the massive protests against the war on Gaza:

More labour unrest as economic crisis worsen

Some of the labour actions that have taken place during the last few days, from today's issue of el-Badeel: Workers at two branches of Nile Cotton went on strike, protesting delays in payment of the salaries for februari. At Daytex in Alexandria, workers striked in protest against the continuing refusal of the company to pay last years "labour day bonus." They had been promised to receive it on 1 Mars, but instead discovered that they wouldn't even receive their usual bonuses and allowances on the grounds that the company is making losses. Service taxi drivers in Alexandria also announced a strike in protest against arbitrary fines and abuse by the traffic police. And employees at Atlas Contracting refused to receive their salaries after they discovered the management had deducted 5% from their wages without reason.

Although we can't know for sure, at least three of these protests could be tied to the global economic crisis, that is hitting the Egyptian economy and the textile industry in particular very hard. This point was also made by trade unionist Fatma Ramadan during the discussion organized at the Center for Socialist Studies yesterday. Lay-offs, wage cuts, delayed payments is getting more common, and there is reports about mass dismissals of thousands of workers in the industrial zones - where many are working on temporary contracts or without contracts at all.

Railway technicians in Assiut stage sit-in

More protests among the railway workers: El-Badeel reports that 70 technicians at the station in Assiut held a sit-in on Saturday, demanding equality with their colleagues working within the administration after the latter had received a bonus that was twice as high. The sit-in ended quickly after the management had promised to realize the demands.

"The students' first demand: Kick state security out!"

Students from a broad range of political currents - from Muslim Brotherhood to socialists, nasserists and the "6 April movement" - demonstrated for several hours at Cairo University today, protesting security interventions on universities and rising tuition fees. Needless to say, the security presence outside the main gates was massive. The students were allowed to protest just outside the campus - surrounded by hundreds of riot police - only after they attempted to force open the locked gates.

Click the pic above for a set of photos on flickr, or here for Hossam al-Hamalawy's links to updates and reports about the protest.

There has been some confusion as to why this was announced in some places as an "International Student Day" event, as this day is in November. Zeinobia has a post here with some of the historical background to the National Student Day, an Egyptian event that, just like the Police Day celebrated a month ago, has it's origins in the struggle against British colonialim after World War Two.

Additional note: It's worth mentioning that on this day four years ago the third demonstration by the Kifaya-movement took place in the exact same spot, outside the main gate of Cairo University. It was described by Al-Ahram Weekly as "the largest anti-Mubarak demonstration that had ever taken place." The scenario described in the article was similar to that of today, with students allowed to join the demonstration outside the gates only after climbing on and rattling the chained iron gates.

Famers and Officers - el Horreya villagers protest

Farmers from el-Horreya village in Dekernes, Daqahleya, demonstrated outside the ministry of agriculture today at noon. More than a 100 families in the village and adjacent villages was driven from land they had been cultivating for decades when a new land law was introduced in the 90's. More than ten years later, some of them are still staging regular protests in front of the ministry, demanding the replacement land that was promised but never given to them.

"We've been coming here again and again for ten years, but never received a reply," one of the farmers said. "There has been no results, and it's feels pointless. But we'll keep coming, until we receive our rights. For us there is no alternative but land to feed our families."

As I was taking photos of the protest a plainclothes officer approached me, clearly astonished to see a foreign journalist talking to the fellaheen. "Who told you about this?" he wanted to know. When I replied that I received the news through the internet, his jaw fell to the ground. "Al nas dol tala3u al-internet?!" [those people are on the internet?!] he blurted out. Then he stared at me and them in disbelief for a few seconds, before walking away in silence.

Pic above: The sign reads "Farmers of Daqahleya, no alternative but land, we won't leave without a reply."

Families of jailed Mahalla demonstrators hold protest

Families of the 22 convicted in the Mahalla-trial held a protest in front of the prosecutor's office yesterday, el-Badeel reports, demanding a decision on the pleas for pardon of their family members, who were sentenced between 3-5 years in prison by a state security court over the demonstrations and riots on Mahalla on 6 and 7 April last year.

Pic above: Relatives protest in the lobby of the Tanta court during the trial, 11 October 2008.

Wadi Natrun farmers protest rising land prices

El-Badeel and el-Doustour reports: Between 400 and 600 small farmers in Wadi Natrun demonstrated in front of the ministry of agriculture on Sunday, accusing the government of "selling their land to them twice" and protesting a dramatic raise in the yearly installments which threatens to force them away from their plots, after they had worked hard to cultivate the previously unproductive area. According to el-Badeel the total number of famers affected is about 10.000.

Since the mid-90s when regulations on land rents (introduced as a central element of land reforms during the Nasser era) was abolished by the government, hundreds of thousands of Egyptian small farmers have been forced of land often cultivated by them and their families for decades.

Photographers protest police violence

Click the pic for a set on flickr of today's protest against police violence against photographers. This protest was originally planned for October, but was postponed by the leadership of the Photographers Association after the interior ministry offered to hold "dialogue" on the issue of police brutality. Apparently, the heads of the association decided to endorse today's protest only when they realized it was going to take place anyway.

Update: Here is a report from Sarah Carr.