Comrade Doaa Bassyouni introducing the speakers…

Wael Habib, Ghazl el-Mahalla worker…

Kamal el-Fayoumi, Ghazl el-Mahalla worker…

Khaled Ali, labor lawyer and director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights…

Mostafa Bassyouni, revolutionary socialist and journalist…

Independent trade unionist and public transport worker…

Mohamed Gamal, independent trade unionist and Masriya Pharmaceutical Co worker…

Haitham Mohammadein, labor lawyer and revolutionary socialist…

Wagdi Abdel Aziz, independent trade unionist at the State TV and leftist activist…

Independent trade unionist at the Information Centers…

Mabrouka, an independent trade unionist at the Information Centers…

Ali Nagui, one of the founders of the Workers Democratic Party…

Independent trade unionist at Egypt Air…

Historic victory for Egypt’s working class… The government has finally agreed to dissolve the board of the corrupt, state-run general federation of trade unions, the federation of thugs, the federation of thieves, the federation of government agents who sabotaged strikes and cracked down on any dissent in the workplace.

Historic victory by all means. I’ll write more this weekend on our next move and what the government has in mind, but let’s remember the Mahalla workers who started in January 2007 this fight against that corrupt federation…

And we’ll never forget the Property Tax Collectors who took this fight a step forward, launching in December 2008 our first independent trade union in the history of the country since 1957…

Long live the Egyptian working class, Long live the Egyptian Revolution…

This is a music track I put together in 2008 following the April Mahalla uprising, where I mixed Yann Tiersen’s “Summer ’78″ piano piece with anti-Mubarak chants I had recorded previously during Kefaya protests.

Finally, the talented photographer/multimedia journalist and friend James Buck added the music track to a slide show of photos, taken by Nasser Nouri and edited into black and white by me, of the uprising…

Kamal el-Fayoumi, Mahalla textile worker and one of the founders of the Democratic Workers Party, in Talaat Harb Square, Cairo, as trade unionists and labor activists gathered to march on Tahrir.

Tens of thousands of protesters flock to Tahrir Square on Friday, staging a sit in, calling for the continuation of the revolution…

The Mahalla workers, on 17 February 2008, were the first to put forward the demand, for raising the national minimum wage to LE1,200 per month, after it stagnated at LE35 per month since 1984. Nazif’s neoliberal cabinet only raised it to LE400 last year.

Following the uprising, Essam Sharaf’s cabinet had announced it’d raise the minimum wage to only LE700, despite condemnations from labor groups and NGOs. But shockingly now the military junta has officially endorsed the new government budget whereby the national minimum wage had been further reduced to LE684, with more austerity measures taken…

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawy, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), has endorsed the 2011/2012 state budget after it was amended and approved by the cabinet.
The total budget expenditure was amended from LE515 billion to LE491 billion, of which 54 percent would be directed to social projects.
The minimum wage was reduced from LE700 to LE684 per month as of July, with an annual total of LE9 billion to be paid in wages for two million government employees.
Expenditure on education decreased from LE55 billion to LE 52 billion, health from LE24 billion to LE23.8 billion, and housing from LE21 billion to LE16.7 billion.