Ripple effect

Serene Assir reports from Talkha as women at a Daqahliya garment manufacturing plant take action to secure almost a decade's worth of unpaid bonuses

---

Faced with the closure of the privately-owned Mansoura-España garments factory 284 workers, some of them employed by the company for 20 years, began a sit-in on 21 April within the factory grounds. Among their demands is the payment of bonuses owed since 1999.

"We have been offered two months' basic salary as compensation, which for the majority of us amounts to LE300. We will not call off the sit-in until we are given what we are owed. This is our right and we will not sacrifice it, for our own sake or for the sake of our families," said one woman protester who asked that her name be withheld for fear of identification by the security forces. "We have been robbed long enough. We will not walk away in silence."

Throughout the strike the protesters, a majority of them women, have slept on the factory's stone floors and faced unsanitary conditions. Intervention by Minister of Manpower and Emigration Aisha Abdel-Hadi has involved little beyond calls for the sit-in to end so that negotiations can take place and a promise of an additional month's salary for each of the workers to be paid out of the ministry's budget.

When her proposal was accepted by representatives from the factory's union committee the workers were left feeling cheated. "We were abandoned by the very people we elected," said Mohamed, another worker. "They were afraid and they caved in, giving up what started as our common goal up in the process."

At the time of writing, employees at the factory were still working their contracted shifts but insist they will use all the peaceful means at their disposal in order to secure their goals of fair pay or else fair compensation, along with the bonus payments they are owed. "This is a very big step for us. We have left our families in order to take part in this sit-in. Some of the women are being threatened with divorce but they have no intention of leaving. One woman got married the day before the sit-in began and decided it was more important to be here than be outside," said another woman protester, also speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity.

Pressured by the government and the company board, abandoned by their representatives, they fear more concrete steps could be taken to force them to end the sit-in. "We are worried that unless things change quickly in our favour the security forces might intervene any day," said one protester.

Such fears are well-founded. Mohamed El-Attar, one of the leaders of the 27,000-strong Ghazl Al-Mahala strike in December, received instructions on 6 May transferring him from his home in Mahala Al-Kubra to Alexandria by 16 May. "The order was communicated to me by the company but it originated with state security. That much was made very clear," he told the Weekly. However, following intense campaigning by human rights activists and the press, the order was revoked 15 May. "I didn't know how I would manage. All I knew was that I was not willing to have my morale broken by such pressure."

Nevertheless El-Attar, a father of three, regrets the law in its present form should penalise workers. "That is the worst part of the situation. The law, combined with the treatment we receive as well as dismal pay, leaves workers in a conundrum. It was only recently, when the company was slated for privatisation that we realised that whatever rights to syndicate representation we did have would be taken away. It was then we decided to organise ourselves in spite of everything."

Despite the legal, security and economic odds stacked against them, the strike at Ghazl Al-Mahala succeeded in halting the privatisation of the textile company and has served as an inspiration to workers in other sectors and governorates. El-Attar's personal success in securing the revocation of the transfer order will no doubt establish similar precedence.

"With every protest or strike that occurs workers elsewhere are inspired to take action," said Mustafa Bassiouni, labour correspondent for the opposition daily Al-Dostour. "Workers are becoming increasingly aware that the pro-government General Federation of Trade Unions will not give them the go-ahead needed to call a strike legally so they are finding ways to skirt the law in pursuit of their rights."

Under Egypt's labour laws a two-thirds majority of the General Federation of Trade Unions must support industrial action in a vote taken at least 10 days before action takes place. According to Bassiouni, not only is such support withheld but the stipulation that permission be sought so early undercuts the effectiveness of industrial action by default. Meanwhile, laws pertaining to personal rights, including the emergency law and the new anti-terror legislation, can be implemented to prevent workers from gathering, although the right is enshrined in UN conventions to which Egypt is party.

Workers in the nuclear, textile, garments, cement, dairy and public transport sectors have all taken action in the last six months. Many others, though, have remained silent despite poor conditions and low pay across the country. "Though what we have been seeing over recent months might seem impressive relative to the previous quiet it is just the tip of the iceberg," says Bassiouni.

When the first protests began, the government and company management made concessions and compromises. Recently, though, the response has begun to harden amid fears that the similarity of the problems and material difficulties faced by workers across the country could turn the protests into a nationwide movement.

The apparent change in policy was signalled by the forced closure on 25 April by 200 security police of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services (CTUWS), a leading workers' rights advice centre. Days later Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in a speech to mark Labour Day, said his government was committed to protecting workers' rights.

In a television address on the subject delivered in April Abdel-Hadi expressed concern that individuals with an interest in "igniting revolution" were behind the actions. Workers deny their protests are politically motivated.

"Nobody has incited us to protest and we are affiliated to no one," said one worker at the Mansoura- España factory. "All we want is to secure our basic rights. Our only goal is to secure the means to lead a dignified life."