Solidarity needed with the Helwan Engineering Industries factory, who are facing military tribunal for protesting lax industrial safety measures that led to the death of one of their comrades.
A protest is planned this Wednesday 12 noon, in front of the Public Prosecutor’s office in downtown Cairo.
Workers at the privately-owned Abul Sebae Textile Company partially suspended their industrial action today after the owner offered to pay part of the late due salaries. Hossam el-Hamalawy reports…
The workers had gone on strike yesterday, around 3:30pm, protesting the delay in pay. Some workers who spoke to Al-Masry Al-Youm complained they had not received their wages for three months.
On Saturday night, striker Alaa Gameel said, the owner, Engineer Ismail Abul Sebae, showed up in the factory to announce its “temporary closure” for 49 days, due to financial problems. “He also told us to go seek other jobs elsewhere if we can,” Gameel added.
The workers fearing this was a precursor to liquidating the firm, refused the “holiday” and insisted on receiving their full pay. On Sunday morning, according to workers’ accounts, senior police officers visited the factory and assured the workers they’d be paid by 3pm.
“When the clock struck 3pm, everyone from the management disappeared,” said Gameel. “The police also disappeared after locking us up in the factory, sealing the gates.”
The company, which is located in Mahalla’s Qualified Industrial Zone, produces towels and bathroom ropes for exports to the US, Israel, South Korea, according to Hamdi Hussein, the director of Afaq Center, a labor rights group. It neighbors an intersection of four major highways that run in the Nile Delta province. The company includes three factories on its compound, employing more than 8,000 workers according to striker Alaa Gameel.
By 3:30pm, the workers’ patience in the biggest of the three of factories ran out so they started chanting inside the factory gates. In half an hour, “the young women started it all,” said Gameel. “They came from the other factories, and cut the highway and stopped the buses and cars. We were embarrassed, and couldn’t leave them alone, so the men were encouraged to break the gate and join the women’s protest.”
Central Security Forces, whose camp is located within walking distance form the factory swiftly showed up, and clashed with the strikers who smashed at least three cars and one bus who hit a woman worker. The traffic was brought to halt from 4 to 7pm in front of the factory, till members of parliament, security generals and Labor Ministry officials convinced the strikers to clear the road and started negotiations, according to eyewitnesses.
The initial offer made by MP Ezzat Derrag was refused, as it would have left each worker in the factory with LE25 only for a promise the rest of their salaries would be paid “soon.”
“Very few workers in the factory have contracts or decent salaries,” said Hamdi Hussein of Afaq. “Some workers in the weaving section might receive salaries more than a thousand, but this is not the case for the rest.”
The 24-year-old Alaa Gameel told Al-Masry Al-Youm he had been working in the factory for ten years, without a contract, at LE11 daily wage, which he would receive every two weeks. He also added that he had been forced to sign in his resignation with a blank date before he was given a job. “This practice is rampant in the private sector companies,” said Hamdi Hussein.
“The LE25 they offered yesterday was insulting,” Gameel angrily said. “We want our full pay. Already we don’t have health insurance and we can be sacked anytime. At least give us our pay.”
The workers continued striking till 8am this morning, when government officials and management personnel made a new offer by which roughly one third of the late salaries were paid, and the rest was promised on Sunday.
Some workers accepted the offer and returned to work, others refused, and some are still waiting to get paid today. It remains unclear whether the night shift workers will accept the deal or not.
Attempts by Al-Masry Al-Youm to reach Ismail Abul Sebae for a comment failed.
“Do you know what Mahalla did last year?” asked striker Gameel. “We burnt everything to the ground because we could not find bread. Does the government want that to be repeated? We want our pay or else that is what they will get.”
Photo courtesy Mohamed Maree
Postal workers demonstrate in front of Cairo’s Press Syndicate, denouncing state-run unions and threatening to resume their strike…
The steel mills workers in Tebbeen, south of Cairo, staged a sit in around 4:15pm yesterday, inside their company compound, protesting attempts by the management to extend their working hours. The sit in was suspended after one hour, on receiving assurances from the management no extension would take effect.
The Nile Cotton Co strikers staging a sit-in, downtown Cairo…
Th postal workers’ strike has been suspended for another round of negotiations…
Per reports…
Workers at the Tanta Flax and Oil Company (sometimes confusingly referred to as Tanta Linen Co.) are coming under pressure from the management in an attempt to abort a strike that has been announced for May 31, Tadamon reports. The head of the local union has been forced to take a month’s “vacation” without salary and is being accused of assaulting another worker.
According to workers at the company, the management also sent a letter to the General Union of Textile Workers asking it to dismiss the local union representatives (who are supposedly elected by the workers) and withdraw its backing for the strike. Two workers I spoke to yesterday welcomed the support of the union, while remaining cynical about the motives behind it: “They are afraid of independent unions, that’s why they are acting now,” one of them said.
Just like in Sheeben el-Kom, this company was sold to a foreign investor a few years ago (in this case a Saudi sheikh), which may be one of the reasons why the state-controlled union has chosen to intervene in this particular case. Feeling the pressure from intensifying attempts to organize workers independently, the union is trying to regain some legitimacy by backing workers against foreign capital, in a way they are still not prepared to do when it comes to companies owned by the state or Egyptian investors.
More background can be found in this report by Sarah Carr: State-run union backs textile workers’ strike.
Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist from Cairo
hossam [at] arabawy [dot] org
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