Wildcat Strikes for Higher Pay

​​Empty polling stations, peaceful streets, no major demonstrations. The referendum to confirm President Hosni Mubarak's altered constitution last March outstripped all the previous signs that the Egyptians have very little interest in their country's political process. Even though important issues were at stake, they stayed away from the polling stations in droves.

But that doesn't mean that no one in Egypt stands up against rigged elections, corruption and public scandals. You just have to look a little closer. Last autumn, students protested against elections for the student parliament, in which only pro-government candidates were permitted to stand.

Standing up to Mubarak's autocratic rule

The students promptly organised their own informal elections. And Egyptian judges, viewed by many as the "last bastion" in the fight against Mubarak's authoritarianism, have long been fighting to remain involved in the election monitoring process. So far in vain, however, as the most recent changes to the constitution kicked them out for good.

The only people to succeed in their protests against the regime in recent years are the Egyptian workers. Unofficial strikes in the past months have seen tens of thousands of workers call for promised wage increases and higher bonuses.

After several strikes, the government gave in to the pressure. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif raised the workers' annual bonuses from around 14 euro to two months' wages on 3 March. They were last raised in 1984. The last meeting of the committee formed to keep state-employed workers' pay in line with inflation was held in the 1980s.

Fighting "yellow" trade unions

The most militant strikers are the workers from the Mahalla textile factory on the Nile delta. They recently sent a delegation to Cairo to have the results of their works council elections cancelled by the trade union federation. The delegates brought with them some 12,000 signatures and threatened to form a new, independent union.

That would be an absolute first in Egypt, where all trade unions are government-controlled. "No, we're not scared," says a confident Mohammed el Attar, one of the workers' leaders. The official Egyptian unions are run by apparatchiks who always take the government's side.

When Mahalla's workers were striking for the payment of their bonuses in December, the works council took on the government's position. Its main activity was to disappear for days on end.

But this time, the workers are just too frustrated: "Before my industrial accident I earned 35 euro a month. Now they employ me as a waste collector and I only earn 15 euro," complains Zayn el Zaky, one of the workers, holding up a hand with two fingertips missing.

The rebellious workers of Mahalla, who led pioneering strikes In the 1920s and 40s, are just the tip of the iceberg. In the past weeks, Egypt's train drivers and cement factory workers from the south of Cairo have started wildcat strikes. Workers across the country are fighting for higher wages, the payment of promised bonuses and against management corruption.

A state of siege

"We're seeing many changes. People now have the possibility to express their opinion in a legal manner, which doesn't mean political instability. The government does not have a problem dealing with it," Investment Minister Mahmoud Mohieddin told the state press in a recent interview.

The truth is quite the opposite. But the minister's naivety is understandable – he presumably has no idea of the Egyptian security situation himself.

The Cairo police sent two of the five buses of Mahalla workers back to the city limits. Before that, many of the strikers received threatening telephone calls. The factory itself was surrounded by thousands of police officers for weeks.

The factory's director fell back on a jaded conspiracy theory, purporting that the strikes were started by the Muslim brotherhood.

But the workers don't have further-reaching political goals. They reject privatisation of the state-owned companies. Ironically enough, it was Gamal Abdel Nasser's policy of nationalisation that put them in their current position. Decades of mismanagement, corruption and lack of investment have left the Egyptian textile industry at the bottom of the heap.

Strikes for financial survival

"The factory in Kafr Al-Dawar has nothing to offer potential buyers, and Mahalla's 28,000 workers make it too large for an investor to manage," said Mohieddien. He has no intention of even attempting to sell the factories, and can't understand why the workers are still striking.

But the strikers have other things on their minds. During the heated discussion with the trade union federation in Cairo, one of the workers stands up. "Look at my clothes," he shouts out. "We're in work, but we're still some of the poorest people in Egypt!"

His colleagues applaud enthusiastically. The strikers are fighting simply for their own survival and that of their families. But with the mass exodus from the national trade union federation, which the regime has repeatedly used to press-gang voters, they have unconsciously crossed a boundary.

Mahalla's textile factory was once a flagship project, the first factory to be nationalised by Nasser. Perhaps this time around, its workers will be the first to finally achieve permanent co-determination.

Frederik Richter

© Qantara.de 2007

Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire

Qantara.de

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