The new minister of transportation, Atef Abdel Hameed, responded negatively to calls by transport workers in several sectors to impeach their senior managers, saying it was none of the workers’ business.
The mass strikes since the first week of February, which effectively led to Mubarak’s fall, saw workers putting forward a wide array of demands related to their work conditions and right to unionize. But more or less the common denominator in those strikes has been the impeachment of corrupt managers and directors, all remnants of the Mubarak’s regime. The public transport workers in specific played a central role in the bringing the capital to halt, adding more pressure on Mubarak with a set of clear political demands for regime change.
Minister Abdel Hameed has to listen to the workers.
Mounir Fawzi Ahmad, a 37-year-old who’s been working at the Public Transportation Authority as a calligrapher for the past 10 years, for a basic monthly salary of LE179 that goes up with the bonuses to a pathetic LE350.
His job at el-Mostaqba Garage includes painting the busses’ license plates and the side placards that carry the names of the Garages and stations. Not only does he have to put up with the ridicule he occasionally receives from his managers for being a dwarf, but also he is not given any art supplies for his work. No brushes, no paints, nothing… Mounir has to buy these supplies on his own expense!
“I can’t afford buying these things every month,” he said. “And if the placards don’t get painted, I receive financial penalties. The management cuts my salary, so it becomes even more difficult for me to buy the supplies the following month. So I end up borrowing money in order to be able to do my job.”
I attended yesterday a small celebration gathering hosted by the local branch of the Nasserist Party in Ezbet el-Nakhl, north of Cairo, that included some of the Public Transport strike leaders, activist lawyers and journalists…
Abdel Ghani, Imbaba Garage: “The Mahalla workers and the textile strikes taught all Egyptian workers how to strike and to stage sit-ins.”
Samir, Giza Branch: “We are ready to strike again if the government does not fulfill the agreement.”
Wael, Nasr City’s el-Mostaqbal Garage: “The (state-backed) General Union (of Transport Workers) belongs to the government, not the workers. We need a new union. We already started our campaign to collect signatures from the workers to impeach the members of the union committee. If the General Union does not accept the impeachment requests, we will launch an independent union like what the real estate tax collectors did.”
Socialist Lawyer, Haitham Mohammadein, the legal consultant for the Union of Real Estate Authority employees: “There is a lot to be learned from the experience of the Real Estate Tax Collectors. The government claims the General Federation of Trade Unions is the only representative of the workers. That is not true. This Federation represents the government interests only. The tax collectors understood this fact well, and the law was on their side. The government breaches the constitution and the international conventions it signed by restricting your right to form a new independent union.”
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