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Thursday 01 October 2009 State phone workers stage sit-in
By Muhammad Azouz, Hisham Omar and Samah Abdel Ati
Some 1200 employees of the state-run Egyptian Telephone Company staged a sit-in recently in the Maasara region south of Cairo. Disgruntled workers complain that they have not received monthly salaries for September, Eid el-Fitr holiday bonuses or promised annual salary increases. Labor syndicate president Salah Heikal called on Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel Hadi to intervene in order to resolve the impasse. The Egyptian Telephone Company is owned by private investors (70 percent), the Egyptian Telecommunications Company (10 percent) and the National Bank of Egypt (10 percent). The remaining 10 percent is owned by the syndicate.
According to the syndicate's Mahmoud Sobeih, primary investors hope to liquidate the firm's assets and lay off redundant workers in order to pay for company premises that extend over 14 acres of Nile-side land. "And they appear to be doing this -- even though the company generated LE2 billion in profits from 2000 to 2006," he said
Pending legality: the growing politicization of Egypt’s labor
Egyptian political activists often joke that their country has only five organized groups: the state’s civil and military bureaucracy, Sufi orders, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Orthodox Church, and the Ahly football club. But a new group might be added to that list soon. With rising labor militancy, the Egyptian workers are increasingly searching for their own free unions to institutionally address their deteriorating economic conditions. Disillusioned with the 52-year-old, state-controlled Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions (EFTU) and facing unemployment due to the government’s privatization plans and the global economic crisis, calls for establishing independent trade unions to defend workers’ rights are finding even greater resonance.
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