Egypt

Oppose Egypt strike ban

Extracts from a 23 March statement from the Centre for Trade Union and Workers’ Services and the Federation for Independent Unions. The Egyptian cabinet of ministers approved a draft law which criminalises sit-ins, protests and gatherings which hamper work in public or private places. It decided to submit the draft law to the Supreme Military Council for final consideration and adoption. [This] is a legal disaster. It is a return to penalising the right to strike. The Egyptian workers have struggled for decades for the right to strike. They paid the price by being imprisoned, transferred or...

Egypt: new constitution goes against left

There were big turnouts for Egypt’s referendum on constitutional amendments on Saturday March 19, with people queuing sometimes for hours to cast their votes. The vote was heavily — 77 per cent of the votes cast — in favour of the amendments. But most of the groups involved in the “25 January” revolution which toppled President Hosni Mubarak had called for a “no” vote – demanding instead that the entire constitution be scrapped and a new one drawn up by a Constituent Assembly. The Muslim Brotherhood called, however, for a “yes” vote. Conservative Muslim leaders have told voters that it is...

How Twitter is like a horse

Later this month I’ve been invited to debate some of the leading online campaigners in Britain on the role of new media in the revolutions taking place in Middle East. The organisers are calling it “Activism vs Slacktivism” and no, I don’t understand what that means either. But I do know the organisations that will be up on the podium with me — including Amnesty International and Oxfam. I was invited because I’d written something in the Guardian recently challenging the idea that what happened in Egypt could be called “the Twitter revolution”. What I actually wrote was this: “While the media...

Egyptian women right to protest

On 8 March, International Women’s Day, a few hundred women and their male supporters gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demonstrate for women’s rights. The demo had been well publicised. Billing it as a Million Women March was over-optimistic, but the organisers wanted to echo the calls for a million man (person?) march during the campaign to oust Hosni Mubarak. And there certainly should be a million person march for women’s rights in Egypt. Egyptian women face many of the same problems of women around the world and particularly in developing countries; but they have additional problems...

Egyptian trade unionist on the revolution: "My lifelong dream has come true"

Extracts from an interview with Kamal Abou Aita, President of the Real Estate Tax Authority Union (RETA), the first independent union in Egypt, established in 2009. How did you feel during the initial days of the revolution? I had a feeling of indescribable joy at seeing my lifelong dream coming true. To see Egyptians taking to the streets en masse, it was a moment of incredible joy. How do you explain such a massive mobilisation within such a short space of time? The young people managed to mobilise huge numbers of people. At the same time, since 2006, workers had started strike movements...

Independent Egyptian unions hold their first conference

Tamer Fathy, International Coordinator of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services , spoke to Sacha Ismail. We held the first conference of our independent union federation yesterday [2 March - see here ]. It was attended by hundreds of activists from sectors including the retail tax collectors, health technicians, pensioners, teachers, telecommunications, textile workers, iron and steel, from the industrial regions of Sadat City... The 24,000 workers at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company at Mahalla, in the Nile delta, have decided to leave the state union federation and join ours...

The "working-class component" in Egypt

Joel Beinin is Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University, USA. He has written extensively on workers’ movements in the Middle East, including for the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center. He spoke to Solidarity about the prospects for Egypt’s new workers’ movement. Workers were critical in bringing the reluctant generals to the decision to ask Mubarak to step aside (or force him out, it’s unclear). They also continue to play a role by engaging in strikes since Mubarak’s departure. But there isn’t a nation-wide leadership of the workers’ movement, despite the fact that it has been...

Left parties emerging in Egypt

We now have a report of the formation of two new leftist parties, including one that explicitly calls itself a labour party — Labour Democratic Party. Its founding statement says: “Businessmen and political elites have their own parties and groups while workers, despite their critical role in the revolution, don’t have a political party to represent and lead them in the struggle for power.” Kamal Khalil, its spokesperson, is or was a leader of the Revolutionary Socialist group. It appears that the party seeks to base itself on the emerging independent trade union movement, which is a very good...

Egyptian strikers raise new demands

Despite threats from the army to ban strikes, every day brings more news of Egyptian workers taking militant action to raise their demands in the new situation following the overthrow of Mubarak. Sit-ins, the blocking of major roads, protests outside the offices of employers — and the official state-run, corrupt union federation, the ETUF — and just plain walk-outs have taken place in virtually all sectors from gold miners and coke workers, via textile and transport workers, through to bank employees — who closed the stock exchange — and teachers. It is as if the lid has been taken off a pot...

Egypt: strikers defy the army

The fall of Mubarak was prepared by an upsurge of strikes in Egypt, over several years since 2004. It has been followed by a greater upsurge, exceeding anything ever seen before in the region. Soon after taking over from Mubarak, the army told journalists that it would ban strikes, and then made a public call for strikes to end. In fact it has not been able to stop the strikes. It has not even been able to keep Tahrir Square clear of demonstrators. The activity reported in the mainstream press — the Tahrir Square demonstrations, the Facebook agitation, the discontented middle class — is...

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