Mar3e called in with the following news: 17 workers from Nile Cotton Ginning Company, who were ordered to be transferred from Menya to Zefta as a punishment for their involvement in the recent series of strikes, are now in the Tanta University Hospital, after the car carrying them to the company’s branch in Zefta got into an accident around 2pm in the village Berma.
Joey reports for Al-Masry Al-Youm….
Egyptian workers from across the country came together for a joint meeting on Friday night at the Al-Hilaly Organization for Freedom of Speech, downtown Cairo, to talk of their experiences in combating poor conditions, low wages and factory administration. It was one of the increasingly frequent mass meetings, where workers converged to show solidarity with their compatriots, in what many hope will change the tide of burgeoning industrial action.
The workers, including a number from Tanta Flax and Oil Company, which has now entered its third month of action against the Saudi owner who has refused to neither pay back salaries nor negotiate with the strikers.
A scheduled sit-in at the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration was scheduled for today, but the state-backed General Union of Textile Workers decided last night to back out.
Safwat Michel, a worker at the factory, said, “the roads would have been blocked so we called it off,” for fear of “arrest or a confrontation.”
The cancellation comes after last Tuesday’s upheaval in Tanta after a journalist with the independent daily Ad-Dustour and a television crew attempted to film inside the factory. Security and factory administration refused to allow them into the factory, causing the workers to head to the streets in protest. At least nine anti-riot security force vehicles arrived on the scene shortly after and forced the workers to back down, but not before they achieved a minor victory. Officer Ashraf Darwish, who had been in charge of media at the factory, was transferred upon the strikers’ demand, which ostensibly has now opened the factory to the media, Michel confirmed.
In Cairo, the optimism was apparent, as often loud and heated arguments erupted over the course of action that could be taken by all the workers in a unified stance against what they called the “oppression” of their factories’ administrations.
One of the options discussed was a possible re-nationalization of the factories by the government in order to ensure their rights are guaranteed. With rising costs of living and food prices skyrocketing, many workers continue to persist on salaries of a decade, or longer, ago.
“There is a need for the government to rethink these sales contracts, so the land would still belong to the country even if the government had to give back some money to the investors,” said Nabih Abdel Ghani of Tagammu Party, an option unlikely to be received well by the authorities.
Many workers live on around LE12 per day, hardly enough to survive themselves, but with families, they argue, it is becoming “unbearable.”
Mohamed Radi, a worker at the Nile Cotton Ginning Company in Minya, said on Friday that when the management of the privatized firm refused to hand out the appropriate annual raises required by the government and eventually moved the factory some 8 hours away.
“We were promised that all the allowances would be effective [last] October and all the investor really cared about was making money and selling the land,” Radi began, “he transferred people to a town that is 8 hours away without giving travel allowances and leaving their families behind. He was trying to make it unbearable so we would leave.”
The worker says that despite these efforts, a majority of workers have continued to arrive on the job, leaving their families behind and struggling to make ends meet.
Cairo has been the scene recently of an increasing number of national labor meetings, like Friday’s conference, with workers across the country continuing to demand their rights. Strike leaders from factories in rural areas are coming together to show solidarity with their fellow workers elsewhere.
“We must come together and be one united front of workers if this struggle is going to continue and create real movement and change. It is time for all workers to realize the importance of working together in different areas,” one outspoken worker said before the meeting dispersed.
Around 250 workers of the Nile Cotton Ginning Company at Mahalla, Zefta and Kafr al-Zayat in Gharbeya governorate have started a sit-in, accusing Chairman of the Board Abdel Ma’aboud el-Sayfi of not paying them a 7% annual bonus since the 2004. Workers sent faxes to both the Ministers of Manpower and Immigration and of Investment, demanding their unpaid salaries, bonuses and the overtime they say the company committed to them through signed agreements.
The strike has also spread to the company’s branch at Etay el-Baroud, in the Beheira governorate, who threatened to strike after three days of unpaid work in July. They also claim they did not receive a seven per cent yearly bonus, as well as a 10 per cent social bonus.
The workers assert their strike will continue until the dispute is resolved, and hope the ministries will respond as they have in other situations under pressure.
The Ministry of Manpower and Immigration, for example, has paid out of its emergency aid fund a minimum of LE 200 for each of the 1,500 workers of Abul Sebae in Mahalla, whose salaries have been delayed for two or three months.
In related news in Daqahleya, a number of temporary employees in the faculty of engineering of Mansoura University continued a strike for a second day, objecting to the dean’s refusal to make their salaries equal to those of permanent university employees. Mohamed el-Shabrawy, the faculty dean, promised the strikers during a meeting with them yesterday that he would increase their October salaries.
Not all strikes have persisted, however. In Suez, the workers of a fertilizer factory have ended a strike after three weeks, under police pressure. They did not receive any compensation from the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration.
The Nile Cotton Ginning workers struck today in the company’s branches in Nile Delta towns of Mahalla, Zefta, Kafr el-Zayat, while their Upper Egyptian colleagues in Menya took to the streets and clashed with the police troops, after the management failed to meet its promises of paying the workers their late social bonuses.
I uploaded more pix of the Nile Cotton Ginning Co workers’ Sunday protest in downtown Cairo…
One day after their protest was suppressed by the police in front of the parliament, the Nile Cotton Ginning Co. workers have won some concession in an agreement reached with the management, under heavy intervention from State Security police, Labor Ministry officials and parliamentarians trying to contain the one month old strike that has brought to halt the company’s branches in all provinces.
I spoke to one of the company workers in the Mahalla branch. He warned that the management is determined to liquidate the Menya factories and drive its labor force out by early buyouts.
The Nile Cotton Co strikers staging a sit-in, downtown Cairo…
Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist from Cairo
hossam [at] arabawy [dot] org
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