The Tax Collectors‘ Free Union issued a statement denouncing the state-backed General Union of Insurance, Bank and Finance Workers, accusing the latter of trying to hijack the free union’s project to establish a retirement fund for the Real Estate Tax Collectors.
The latest move by general union head Farouk Shehata comes amid continuous stepped up rhetoric by the state-backed union bureaucrats. I was chatting with a labor organizer involved in the current unionization effort about this issue a couple of days ago. He summed up the attitude of the state union men by this: “First, they tried to crush to strikes. They failed. They decided to step aside and do nothing, watching helplessly, only to find the carpet being pulled from beneath their feet slowly. The tax collectors (free union) was a big hit to them. Now it’s become a fashion to speak about independent unions everywhere. They felt their existence is coming to an end. That’s why they started raising their voices and shout every now and then. You have general union heads, with great history of betrayals and treason, suddenly saying they support or even call for strikes. (President of the corrupt, state backed General Federation of Trade Unions Hussein) Megawer is getting into fights with (Finance Minister Youssef Botross) Ghali over demands. You can expect more of this in the future. But there are limits of course and red lines they will never cross, and you don’t know for how long they’d be able to maintain this very fragile balance between the workers and the govt they are serving. After all those ‘yellow trade unionists’ got their jobs thanks to State Security (police).”
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…
The first provincial union branch for the “Independent General Union of the Real Estate Tax Collectors” has been established on the ground and officially declared in the Upper Egyptian province of Bani Sueif. This is the first independent union micro-entity to exist, since 1957, outside the framework of the state-controlled General Federation of Trade Unions.
The Bani Sueif tax collectors quietly carried out the elections, after an overwhelming majority endorsed the call for a free union. Nine union officers were elected, representing the nine directorates in the province, and held their first meeting on Sunday, 24th of August.
The state-backed General Union for Bank and Insurance workers has 11 union committees in the country’s 29 provinces. The only committee in Upper Egypt is in Bani Sueif, and it stood against the strike and does not enjoy any legitimacy. Though the participation of Upper Egyptians in the strike and the movement in general was of a lower profile compared to their northern brethren, as I posted before, things have started moving and the militancy is ascending, that ironically the first union committee is now established in the south before any other leading Nile Delta province. The Bani Sueif free union officers literally overthrew the state-backed union men, even holding the first meeting in the latter’s office, and took possession of the room keys. The management did not intervene. The free union officers agreed they will be holding their meetings regularly on the first Thursday of every month at 1pm.
State Security police has phoned up Abdel Nasser Abdallah, the elected treasurer and one of the leading strikers last December, summoning him to the Bani Sueif State Security Police office today. Abdel Nasser refused to show up, and there are concerns SS may raid his home. International trade unions and labor associations are urged to start opening channels and building contacts with Abdel Nasser and his colleagues to support their efforts.
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