Sarah Carr reports…
Egypt’s postal workers aired their grievances at a press conference on Saturday, calling for the formation of an independent union.
Some 200 postal workers from governorates throughout Egypt attended the press conference, which was followed by a protest on the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate.
Ahmed Allam told the press conference that postal workers “are not frightened” by “the intimidation of state security investigations.” He was referring to the 15-day detention of Mahmoud Faza’a, a postal worker from Ismailia who was arrested after sending a fax to his manager threatening that workers will go on strike if temporary workers are not made permanent.
The demand that the Postal Authority’s approximately 5,000 temporary workers be made permanent is one of three principal demands.
Postal workers are calling for wage parity with workers in the Egyptian Telecommunications Company (ETC) who earn up to three times as much as postal workers.
Workers say that this is inequitable because both ETC employees and Egypt’s 52,000 postal workers belong to the same Ministry of Telecommunications.
“Wages haven’t increased in the last five years while the cost of living has gone up,” said Ahmed Hamdy, head of the Fayoum postal workers’ trade union committee.
“New employees get a starting salary of LE 250 a month,” he added.
Finally, workers are calling for the abrogation of a new appraisal system introduced earlier this year, which they say allows postal workers to be dismissed unfairly.
Officials at the Postal Authority did not comment by press time after promising to do so.
Last month workers in Kafr El-Sheikh began a six-day strike to draw attention to their demands.
“The strike was the initiative of workers in Kafr El-Sheikh who said ‘we have demands.’ The same demands are shared by all workers in all areas,” Hamdy explained.
“We have addressed the general union but unfortunately have had no response,” he continued.
During the press conference workers called for the formation of an independent trade union.
They were supported in this by Kamal Abu Eita, head of the recently formed Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees, who drew parallels between the postal workers’ grievances and working conditions, and the battle fought by tax collectors for a free union, which Abu Eita spearheaded.
Abu Eita also called on postal workers to form a strike committee to coordinate future strike action.
Sarah Carrreports…
Employees of a petrol excavation company allege that over 1,600 of the company’s workers have been summarily dismissed without severance pay.
“I’ve worked in the company for 18 years. I started as an assistant floor man and was then promoted to a driller. And in the end they told me — without giving us a reason and without my having done anything wrong — we don’t want you,” Gamil El-Deery, told Daily News Egypt outside the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration, where workers from the Egyptian Drilling Company (EDC) staged a protest yesterday.
El-Deery has been with EDC for over 18 years. Workers say that employees made redundant have been employed for EDC for between seven and 25 years.
The company, which operates over 60 oil rigs in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Libya, is jointly owned by the Danish A.P Moller-Maesrk group and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation.
Workers allege that at the same time as they are being made redundant — because, as the company allegedly informed them, it has been hit by the economic crisis and cannot afford to keep them on — EDC has purchased costly new drilling equipment and employed new staff.
“The company has let go of these people while it employs new staff. The new staff is paid lower wages on temporary contracts,” one worker told Daily News Egypt.
“They are letting us go because the people they are replacing us with are paid less,” he continued.
Two workers told Daily News Egypt that they had suffered industrial accidents at work for which they had not been compensated.
Workers gathered outside the Manpower Ministry on Monday were hoping to talk to Manpower Minister Aisha Abdel-Hady about their demands for the severance pay they are entitled to, and which they say has been promised to them.
The above are just few examples of how the domino effect works.. Small victories snowball into mass strikes by blue and white collar workers, spilling from one sector to the other…
More than three million people have taken to the streets across France to protest against the government’s handling of the economic crisis.
Thursday’s protests were largely peaceful but were marred by violence when hundreds of demonstrators, mostly youths, clashed with police in several locations, throwing stones and bottles, and setting rubbish bins and bicycles on fire.
Riot police used tear gas and batons to disperse hundreds in Paris, Toulouse in the southwest and Rouen in the north.
About 10 police officers were injured, while around 300 people were briefly detained and police said 49 of those would face charges.
Around one million civil servants were joined by two million members of the public across France in more than 200 protest marches, officials said.
The second such protest in under two months was directed at the policies of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and the latest sign of social unrest due to the global economic downturn.
A similar day of action at the end of January saw an estimated 2.5 million people involved.
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