Posts Tagged ‘demonstrations’

#Libya إنتفاضة بنغازي

Egyptians protest Israeli raid

World condemns Israel raid on Gaza aid convoy

أهالي طوسون يعتصمون أمام وزارة الزراعة بالدقي

Alexandrian farmers from Tosson, denouncing the government, in a protest in front of the Agriculture Ministry in Giza.

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مصر يا أم البلاد.. لسة فيك اضطهاد.. في السياسة والإقتصاد .. عاوزة ثورة يا بلادي

Tanta Flax Company strike enters its 80th day

Jano reports for Al-Masry Al-Youm…

Around 200 workers from the Tanta Flax and Oils Company staged a demonstration outside the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration in Cairo today, marking the 80th day of their strike, demanding the re-nationalization of their company. Hundreds of their colleagues back in the Nile Delta have also announced their intention to launch a hunger strike as of tomorrow.
Some 1,000 workers at the company had started their strike on 31 May, raising demands that include reinstating nine co-workers sacked under the pretext of “inciting labor unrest,” the provision of workers’ profit-sharing which has been overdue for three years, together with the incentive pay withheld since 2003. The workers are also demanding the payment of their social insurance expenses withheld since May 2009, as well as increasing each worker’s monthly food allowance from LE 31 per month to LE 90.
The strikers chanted slogans today denouncing the company owner, a Saudi investor named Abdel Elah el-Kaaki, and the Egyptian executive manager, Mohamed el-Seihy, as “thieves.”
The Tanta Flax and Oils Company was privatized in 2005. Since then, the workers have staged four strikes.
The ongoing strike is the most militant, with the workers demonstrating outside the Saudi Embassy in Giza, blocking off the Nile Delta Tanta-Zefta Highway at least three times, and have called for the re-nationalization of the company. Some strike leaders are even calling for taking over and self managing the company.
“We have sent numerous faxes to the General Union for Textile Workers, the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, the Labor Ministry and to the Prime Minister but no avail,” said Hisham el-Okal, the local union’s deputy treasurer and one of the nine fired workers. “None of these authorities seem concerned with our plight. We hope that the government will heed our demands, but if they don’t then we will continue to escalate our protests. We shall not leave Cairo until our demands our met.”
Gamal Othman, another sacked worker told Al-Masry Al-Youm: “I have been issued a court order to be reinstated in the company, but the administration has ignored this. We will not leave until Aisha Abdel Hady meets with us and resolves all our problems. Otherwise we will sleep here on the sidewalk outside the ministry until our demands are met or until we are all arrested, beaten or even killed by the security forces. We are sick and tired of being ignored.” Othman added the strikers’ representatives repeatedly met with the Minister and her office manager Nahed el-Ashry, as well as Hussein Megawer, the president of the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions, and Saeed el-Gohary, the head of the government-controlled General Union for Textile Workers. “We received nothing but empty promises,” Othman said with frustration.
When contacted, el-Gohary told Al-Masry Al-Youm: “We have appealed several times to the Tanta Flax Company’s administration and its investor to negotiate with us, and indeed we managed to meet with them last month. We reached a tentative agreement, so we called upon the local union to suspend the strike. However, neither the administration nor the investor fulfilled their part of the agreement. Naturally this has angered the workers and they are continuing with their strike.”
This industrial action at Tanta is the first one to ever be authorized by the General Union for Textile Workers, since 1957. The current three-year-old strike wave engulfing Egypt is the strongest since 1946, and is centered in the textile sector. El-Gohary’s general union in particular has been facing the heat, with strikers in different Nile Delta textile mills demanding the impeachment of their state-backed representatives. In one case at least, the workers hospitalized their local union head during the September 2007 strike in the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla when he told the workers to suspend their action.
The General Union endorsed the Tanta strike but attempted, according to observers, to curb the militancy of the industrial action. The strikers told Al-Masry Al-Youm during recent visits to the factory that General Union officials distributed, at the start of the strike, President Mubarak’s posters and banners supporting the state-backed General Federation. These banners were torn down last Tuesday by the strikers, who vented their wrath on the state-backed unions accusing el-Gohary of ordering the suspension of, and stopping his financial support for, their industrial action. The Tanta workers launched an independent strike fund two days ago, collecting LE 1 from every man and woman in the factory, vowing to continue striking with or without the support of the union.

Strikers

Real Estate Tax Collectors demonstrating against the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions, Hussein Hegazi Street, Downtown Cairo…

Young doctors to protest tomorrow over work conditions

Via Al-Masry Al-Youm…

Young doctors will stage a protest tomorrow in front of the Doctors Syndicate’s headquarters demanding better salaries for fresh graduates.
Initiated by the “Young Doctors of Egypt” group on Facebook, which currently includes over 700 members, tomorrow’s two-hour demonstration is the first protest organized by that group.
Young Egyptian doctors suffer from very low incomes ranging between LE 150 and LE250 a month, which barely cover the costs of transportation to the hospitals in which they work. They equally suffer from bureaucratic complications with regards to the pursuance of their studies and professional trainings.
“We address our protest to the Ministry of Health and demand salaries ranging from LE 1,000 to LE 2,000,” explains Mohammed Shafiq, a young doctor who disseminated the demonstration online. Fresh graduates demand raising their basic salary to 1000 LE, to reach a minimal level of 2000 LE with the addition of all bonuses and allowances. They also asked for raising various allowances such as the contagion allowance, as well as transportation, post-graduate studies and other allowances.
“We are also concerned about elevating the quality of the scientific education we receive,” adds Shafiq, who hopes that at least 10 percent of the group members on Facebook will show up at noon tomorrow in front of the Doctors’ Syndicate. In their statement of demands, young doctors requested continuing education inside hospitals through visits by established medics, participation in international conferences, scholarships and fellowship programs. They also requested facilitating the admission procedures for post-graduates studies, which are instrumental to medics’ professional path. Further to post-graduate studies, they demanded fixing a ceiling for admission fees at LE600, a sum that has currently jumped to LE3650.
“We are willing to join forces with other doctors’ organizations for common demands later on,” says Shafiq.
Tomorrow’s protest has been discussed at the board of the Doctors’ Syndicate earlier this week and has garnered at least “verbal” support from its senior members, including some of the Muslim Brotherhood activists within the syndicate.
“It is an opportunity for those young doctors to protest,” says Essam el-Aryan, member of both the Brotherhood and the Doctors’ Syndicate Board, adding that any kind of demonstration in support of doctors is appreciated. But it remains unclear how many doctors belonging to the Brotherhood will actually protest on the stairs of the syndicate alongside their young colleagues. In March 2008, Brotherhood members were accused by secular doctors’ advocacy groups of aborting a planned national strike. The Brothers’ involvement in the syndicate politics, they charged, were only limited to “rhetoric” and regional issues like Palestine solidarity campaigns, refraining from active participation in the fight over work conditions.
Some of us will be present tomorrow, but others have meetings outside,” adds el-Aryan who himself says he has a meeting tomorrow at the time of the protest. “If the demonstration is still on when I come back to the syndicate I will attend it,” he concludes.
The head of the syndicate, Hamdi el-Sayyed, was not available for comment.

Postal workers continue their protests وقفة احتجاجية لموظفي البريد

Postal workers from at least eight provinces gathered yesterday in front of the Egyptian Postal Agency HQ in Ataba, to demonstrate demanding salary increases, job security, and a free union…

Archeologists without a Syndicate آثاريون بلا نقابة