Three Strikes, Three Victories in one Week (Egypt)
Oct 4 2007 11:18
The government keeps caving in...
Quote:
CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt struggled Tuesday to stem a rising tide of industrial action as officials rushed to end the third strike in a week, the latest challenge to President Hosni Mubarak's regime.Labour ministry officials met employee representatives at the Damietta Spinning and Weaving Co to come to an agreement just 24 hours after workers kicked off their strike, the official MENA news agency said.
Labour Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi told reporters she was eager to "protect the interests and rights of the workers."
On Saturday, some 24,000 workers at the Mahalla Spinning and Weaving Co ended their strike over unpaid profit shares and low wages after the government agreed to meet their demands.
The same pattern followed at the Tanta Linseed and Oil factory, where hundreds of workers struck to demand unpaid profit shares, with their demands swiftly met.
"The strikes are a new fashion threatening all of Egypt's companies," the chairman of the Damietta factory told the independent daily al-Masry al-Youm.
In December 2006, workers at the Mahalla textile factory, one of the largest in the world, staged a massive strike. Once the government gave in to workers' demands, new strikes erupted across the country.
In 2006 alone, local media counted at least 200 instances of labour unrest.
Economic reforms that have yielded a six percent annual growth rate in the past three years have failed to trickle down. The strikes are seen as potentially the most serious challenge to Mubarak's regime.
Oct 7 2007 14:15
#2
These victories have important lessons for workers through out the world, as well as Egypt. First that it can fight back against the attacks of the ruling class and push them back. Second that in order to do this they can put no trust in the unions but have to try to organise the struggle themselves. Thirdly, the importance of the spreading of the struggle, it is not clear if workers from one industry went to others to call them out but the example of the victory of one group of workers inspired others to work. This is clearly having a real impact on the state. The need now if for workers in these different industries to get together in struggle and discussion what has happened and what to do to take forwards this movement. The state is clearly hoping that giving into the most militant workers they can separate them from the other workers in struggle or thinking of struggling. Those workers who have won victories need to discuss with other workers in order to spread their experience adn to try and draw as many lessons as possible in order to strengthen the struggles, and to join in their struggles in order to create a united movement which will give strength to all workers. Above all workers need to defend and maintain their autonomy but not allowing the unions, leftists etc to take over their struggles.
This is definitely good news for the underprivileged workers in Egypt because they now have less fear of direct action.
However, something should be made of this, like a strong mechanism / body for building public opinion and organizing mass demonstrations/strikes/protests because it'll only take a violent blow or two by the government (whereby there could be a few victims) to put an end to these short-lived workers movements and consequently allowing the fear to crawl back because there is no pervasive body or organization through which these individuals and movements can communicate and subsequently take action.
This is evident in the recent mass arrests of newspaper editors-in-chief and journalists following the rumors about the president's declining health, which all came after a period of relative freedom in the mass and opposition across the nation, now severely blown and destroyed with the most minimal of efforts by the government.
What Egypt and other countries in similar circumstances need is stronger and more organized public, independent of the government.