Egypt’s property tax collectors are starting an open-ended strike on Tuesday, protesting the Finance Ministry’s decree by which a project for a social welfare fund was commissioned to the state-backed union instead of the independent union that enjoys the support of the majority of the ministry’s civil servants.
The tax collectors had organized a “warning protest” Thursday in front of the parliament, but received no official response.
“We informed the (Finance) Minister with our demands and we’re waiting for a reply by the end of tomorrow,” said Abdel Qader Nada, secretary general of the independent Union of Real Estate Tax Authority employees. “If our demands are not met, we will demonstrate everywhere on Tuesday.”
Last Thursday’s protest included demonstrators from seven governorates, but this Tuesday’s strike would cover 27 governorates, Nada added.
Tarek Moustafa, a Qalyoubeya tax collector and the independent union’s treasurer, asserted the “strike isn’t going to end until our demands are fulfilled. The last sit-in that was two years ago lasted for 12 days in the winter, so what would prevent us this time from staying until we get what we want?”
Kamal Abu Eita, president of the independent union, said on Thursday rights organizations and international labor unions would support Tuesday’s strike. “We will receive a response,” he was certain.
When contacted, the Finance Ministry refused to comment claiming that “Ministry of manpower and the trade unionists are the ones in charge of the fund issue, but not the Ministry of Finance,” according to Ahmad Abdel Razek, director of the Finance Minister’s Assistant’s Office. “The Finance Ministry’s role was limited to issuing the decree of the fund’s establishment out of the members’ (state-backed union) membership fees. Anything else is not our responsibility.”
Aisha Abdel Hadi, Minister of Manpower and Immigration was not available for comment, while her office director, Nahed el-Ashry, refused to speak saying: “Sorry, I don’t prefer interviews with press.”
Egypt’s property tax collectors had staged national protests in 2007 that culminated with a 12-day sit-in in front of the ministerial cabinet headquarters in downtown Cairo. They roughly raised their salaries by 325 percent, thanks to the strike, and went on a year later to found Egypt’s first independent trade union in half a century. Their union was recognized by international trade unions like Public Service International, and saw more than 35,000 local tax collectors joining its ranks, out of a total of 55,000.
النقابة المستقلة لموظفى الضرائب العقارية
تحضر لإضراب عام
معالى وزير المالية :-
عقدت النقابة العامة للضرائب العقارية اجتماع طارئ يوم 7/8/2009 لمواجهة المماطلة فى حقوق العاملين ومحاولات التأمر والسطو على صندوق الرعاية الاجتماعية وتحددت مطالب العاملين فى الآتى
1. تنفيذ المرحلة الثانية بالمساواة مع الضرائب العامة بصرف 3 شهور إثابة والذى كان واجباً تنفيذه بمجرد صدور قانون الضرائب العقارية وتأخر تنفيذ الاتفاق لأكثر من عام
2. بدل الانتقال الثابت الذى وعدتم به
3. تعيين أبناء العاملين خاصة وجود 7 آلاف درجة خالية بالمصلحة
4. تنفيذ قرار سيادتكم رقم 425 لسنة 2009 بتاريخ 28/7/2009 كما نشر بالوقائع المصرية وعدم تمكين أى جهة أخرى لا تمثلنا . خاصة أننا قمنا بإجراء الدراسات والمفاوضات مع مساعديكم الأكفاء .وتم عقد اتفاق بوم 6/7/2009 فى هذا الخصوص .وفى سبيل حماية حقوق العاملين قررت النقابة العامة للعاملين بالضرائب العقارية ونفذت كخطوة أولى إضرابها التحذيرى يوم الخميس 6/8/2009 أمام المصلحة و مجلس الشعب و بهدف تحقيق المطالب العامة للعاملين وتحذير كل من تسول له نفسه بمحاولات السطو على صندوق الرعاية الاجتماعية .كما قررت النقابة العامة مهلة تنتهى يوم الاثنين 10/8/2009 للاستجابة للمطالب العادلة والمشروعة للعاملين وإذا لم تجاب ترقبوا إضرابا عاما وشاملا لموظفى الضرائب العقارية على مستوى الجمهورية يوم الثلاثاء 11/8/2009.
على الله توكلنا و الله ولى التوفيق
النقابة العامة للعاملين بالضرائب العقارية
The (Free) Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees has called for national protests today in all Real Estate Tax Authority Directorates and Offices in every single province in Egypt, and will be mobilizing a protest 10 am in front of the Real Estate Tax Authority HQ in Mounira (by Sa’ad Zaghloul’s mausoleum), to denounce the betrayal of the agreement struck between the free union leaders and the Finance Minister last Thursday. The Cairo protest will be accompanied by sit-ins in all directorates outside the capital.
The free union activists had managed to force the Finance Ministry into officially accepting the proposed retirement fund, by which each property tax collector was to receive 110 month-pay. However yesterday the Finance Minister U-turned and decided to “re-adjust” his ministerial decree, commissioning the project to the corrupt, state-backed General Union of Bank, Insurance and Financial Workers, which has been smashed to pieces, with more than 35,000 (out of 55,000) property tax collectors deserting its ranks to join the free union.
Following two hours of protests in front of the Finance Ministry yesterday, the free union of Tax Collectors activists forced Minister Youssef Boutross Ghali into officially establishing the social fund the free trade unionists have been campaigning for, granting each real estate tax collector 110-month pay on retirement.
The state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions officials have been working hard to sabotage and on occasions hijack the project, but the consistent campaign as well as mobilization on the ground the tax collectors have engaged in, secured the latest victory…
My article in Al-Masry Al-Youm…
In its 2009 Annual Survey of Trade Union Violations issued this week, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) accused the government of “bloody repression and arrests of union activists” in Mahalla, imposing draconian restrictions on industrial actions that make “legal strikes … virtually impossible,” as well as “heavily curtailing the right to form and join trade unions.”
The report also accused the state-backed Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions (EGFTU) of having “close relations with the (ruling) National Democratic Party” and of weak performance in both collective bargaining and in supporting industrial actions. The situation is bleaker, according to the report, in the private sector where “There is very little scope for collective bargaining,” while in the export-oriented Special Economic Zones (SEZs) “investment companies … are exempted from complying with legal clauses relating to labor organizing, thus depriving workers of the right to set up local union committees.”
Although it criticized the continued “barring of unions from engaging in political activities,” the ITUC report mentioned “two pieces of good news” including a halt to the state crackdown on the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS), a leading labor rights NGO, which resumed its activities last July, in addition to the launching of the independent Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees last December—the first independent trade union in Egypt since 1957.
The CTUWS, however, said in a statement it was under the government spotlight recently once more, with renewed harassment against its director Kamal Abbas, who was interrogated and kept for an hour in police custody at the Cairo International Airport. The latter almost missed the plane he was catching to Brussels to attend an ITUC regional conference on 2 July.
The situation is tenser with the Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees (URETAE), whose activists are facing a public campaign by the state-backed EGFTU officials in the press and on TV. Officials have been routinely denouncing the URETAE, declared on 20 December 2008 following the endorsement of around 30,000 property tax collectors in 29 provinces, as an “illegal” entity. Union activists, according to Abdel Qader Nada, a leading member of the union and one of the leaders of the three-month strike in 2007, have been subject to a harassment campaign from both the management and the state-backed officials of the General Union of Bank, Insurance and Financial Workers. “Whenever we try fund raising for the union, we get investigated for collected ‘illegal funds,’” Nada told Al-Masry Al-Youm. “That’s a serious charge.”
URETAE lawyer Haitham Mohammadein notes that the government still deducts the monthly membership fees of the EGFTU from the property tax collectors’ monthly salaries, though more than 35,000 civil servants have already resigned from the EGFTU to join URETAE. Moreover, “Physical force is now being used against the independent trade unionists,” Mohammadein was alarmed.
“Two colleagues at least were assaulted by the (EGFTU) officials,” Nada accused. “Ahmad Abul Yazid, the head of the union in Gharbeia and Ahmad Abdel Sabour from Sharqiya were both beaten up by the government union thugs. They were insulted and slapped on the faces, pushed and kicked.
“We welcome international solidarity from the ITUC and any other labor unions,” Nada said. “The (Egyptian) government is determined to break us.”
Attempts by Al-Masry Al-Youm to get comment from Hussein Megawer, the head of the EGFTU and Labor Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi failed, as their offices never returned the calls.
The ITUC is the largest global labor federation, representing 168 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national affiliates.
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