NEWS & LETTERS, October - November 2009
World in View
Egyptian textile workers' actions spread
by Gerry Emmett
Labor actions continue across Egypt, including among workers in the textile industry. The largely government-owned textile industry employs about a third of Egypt's industrial labor force. Textile workers are poorly paid, but in the past have had job security to compensate for that. However, in recent years the government has been attempting to privatize the industry, which is labor-intensive and undercapitalized, resulting in job losses, pay cuts and benefit cuts.
Last month workers at Mahalla al-Kubra's Aboul Seba textile factory clashed with security forces when they were prevented from demonstrating against unpaid wages and received notices of 15 days mandatory unpaid holiday leave. The Delta town of Mahalla has been an important center of the Egyptian workers' movement for decades.
Women textile workers have played a vital role in Egypt's labor movement in recent years. Their militancy was described by one union leader at Mahalla's Misr Spinning and Weaving plant this way in 2007: "The women [workers] almost tore apart every representative from the management who came to negotiate. The women were more militant than the men. They were subject to security intimidation and threats, but they held out."
Indeed, that very significant strike, which opened a new era for Egyptian workers, began when 3,000 women workers walked off the job and challenged the male workers to do so as well, chanting "Where are the men? Here are the women!"
The world and life experiences of Egyptian workers are far removed from President Mubarak's corridors of power, as well as from the religious fantasies of the Muslim Brotherhood. But workers' struggles are making themselves felt. For the first time, in May of this year, the state-controlled General Union of Textile Workers (GUTW) was compelled to recognize a strike by Tanta Flax and Oil Company workers. The government union did this because it recognizes the threat to its existence in the many calls for independent unions in Egypt today.
When the GUTW withdrew support for the strike, workers refused to end it. Rather, workers have now begun to move from strictly economic demands to political criticism of the government itself.
Wildcat strikes have spread in other sectors of the economy as well. So far this year there have been over 200 strike actions. Even government workers have become more militant, with a nationwide strike by property tax collectors and a threatened strike by postal workers. The new, independent tax collectors union is the first independent union formed in Egypt in 50 years.
It must be recognized that some of the most vibrant and significant of today's labor struggles are taking place in the Middle East, whether in Egypt, or among Iraqi oil and government workers and teachers who still struggle against Saddam Hussein's old anti-labor laws which remain on the books of the new "democracy," or among the combative Iranian workers who are also beginning to form independent unions and participate in the mass outpouring for freedom following the stolen election.
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