Egyptian Workers Rising Again After the Uprising

By Cam McGrath

Striking workers: Egypt’s new military-led government has adopted the same tough line on labour activism and trade unions as its predecessors. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

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El-Beheiry’s ordeal exemplifies the extent to which the authoritarian regime of toppled president Hosni Mubarak was willing to go to isolate and intimidate dissident workers. The state tolerated a degree of political opposition, but when it came to labour issues, any action that threatened to galvanise workers into a cohesive labour movement was swiftly crushed.
Successive governments relied on the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), a colossal state-backed labour organisation with 24 affiliated trade syndicates, to control workers and prevent them from engaging in industrial action. When strikes did break out, the regime smothered them with the riot police and hired thugs – and if that failed, called in the army.
“Mubarak only knew one way to deal with labour disputes: force,” says El-Beheiry.....

Joel Beinin, professor of Middle East history at Stanford University argues that despite small concessions aimed at ending strikes, Morsi largely relied on the same apparatus to quash labour dissent, and proved no more willing than his predecessors to address its underlying causes. At the heart of the underlying causes lie gross inequalities.....

Impoverished workers are protesting for better wages, job security, payment of overdue benefits, and a liveable minimum wage. They have also demanded to exercise the right to freedom of association as guaranteed by international labour treaties to which Egypt is a signatory.
Workers have organised into thousands of independent trade unions since Egypt’s 2011 uprising, but their legitimacy is challenged by Mubarak-era legislation that only recognises ETUF-affiliated syndicates.....

Despite some promising signs, including the appointment of a veteran union organiser as labour minister, rights groups say the new regime is already shaping up to be a lot like its predecessors.
In August, security forces moved in to break up a month-long strike by steel mill workers protesting unpaid wages and bonuses. Days later, riot police forcefully put down a strike at a petroleum company over unpaid bonuses and intolerable working conditions.
Strike leaders have been sacked, and several protesting workers were reportedly referred to prosecutors under laws that criminalise unauthorised collective labour action.
The ruling regime has attempted to paint striking workers as counter-revolutionaries and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a loaded association given the military’s crackdown on the group.
Military leader General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has called on workers to take action against the “instigators” of strikes, and promised to deal firmly with those who disrupt the wheels of production.
“We will help quell this sedition,” he said. “Don’t let anybody interrupt production because this is another means of tearing the country down.”"