Socialist lawyer Haitham Mohamadein and President of the Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees Kamal Abu Eita presenting to the Labor Minister’s Office Director the papers of the newly born union, Egypt’s first independent trade union in 51 years…
I’ve just come back home after spending the day with hundreds of Tax Collectors, who descended on Nasr City, to lobby the Labor Ministry into recognizing the Free Union… It was a show of strength, power of the union.. Habibi, the president of Free Union Kamal Abu Eita was shouting in the mic today in front of the ministry before they forced the officials into allowing them in, saying: “Last century we fought the British colonialists to gain our country’s independence… Today we fight the Egyptian regime to gain the independence of our unions… That (second) battle is no less important.” And he’s right…
It was a FANTASTIC day.. probably one of the happiest days I had so far this year… I gotta run out again now and do some family errands, but I’ll write a report later and upload tons of pix I took…
MABROUK MABROUK MABROUK….
I’m bookmarking resources here…
Via Per…
30.000 real estate tax collectors have signed the founding statement of the Free Union, el-Badeel reports. More than 300 collective resignation letters have been sent to the state-backed union. Representatives of the union also extended their support to the workers in Mahalla, firmly rejecting accusations of the state-controlled union that attempts to establish a free union there is illegal and funded by organizations with a “foreign agenda”. Leading unionist Kamal abu Eita says that such accusations can only come from “someone who doesn’t know anything about the international agreements that Egypt signed”, adding that it is in fact the state-controlled union that is operating outside the law.
Continuous updates on the fight for free unions in Egypt could be found here…
Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist from Cairo
hossam [at] arabawy [dot] org
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