Their offices may have been shut down by state security, but CTUWS workers remain upbeat, writes Faiza Rady "The state security police didn't visit us at dawn as is their wont. Instead, at 10am on Wednesday, 25 April [an official holiday commemorating Israel's 1982 withdrawal from the Sinai] 200 men surrounded the Helwan headquarters of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services (CTUWS), barged in bandying a closure order and told us to get out," Adel Zakariya, editor of the Centre's magazine Kalam Sinai'ia -- Workers' Talk -- told Al-Ahram Weekly. CTUW activists were prepared. State Security officers have been conspicuously stationed on the street since Monday, 23 April, after Minister of Social Solidarity Ali El-Moselhi reportedly ordered the closure of their Helwan headquarters. CTUWS's other two branches, in the Upper Egyptian town of Naj' Hamadi, Qena, and in Mahala Al-Kobra in the Delta, were closed by State Security on 29 March and 11 April respectively. The official reason for the closures was couched in legalise: though CTUWS is registered as a civil company it operates as an NGO. Zakariya dismisses such reasoning as spurious. "The law regulating NGO registration... is arbitrary and involves so much red tape that the majority of NGOs have chosen to register as civil companies. We tried in the past to register with the Ministry of Social Affairs but our application was rejected. Since last year we have been negotiating with the Ministry of Social Solidarity to change our status -- so we stand on record as being in the process of fulfilling their requirements." The much-regretted labour lawyer and political activist Youssef Darwish, who passed away in June of last year, established the CTUWS in 1990 as an independent alternative to the government-controlled General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU). They provide legal services to workers, counsel them about their rights, organise educational workshops and report on labour-rights violations. They also publish the only workers' magazine in the country, providing a unique focus on labour issues. In an effort to prevent its Helwan headquarters from being closed, CTUWS workers and a solidarity committee composed of other rights NGOs alerted the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ICTU), as well as international rights organisations, and held a joint press conference on 23 April. "Civil society organisations will continue to support the CTUWS and will lobby to counter this serious crackdown which heralds the beginning of a wider attack against civil society organisations as a whole, foremost among them human rights organisations," reads the solidarity committee's statement to the press, signed by 30 of Egypt's most prominent NGOs, including the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, the Al-Nadim Centre for the Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and the New Woman's Foundation. Following the press conference, CTUWS activists and representatives of 15 rights NGOs organised an open-ended sit-in at the centre to protest against its closure. "It was to no avail," says Zakariya. "We stood our ground and refused to leave the premise, but as usual state security used force. They dragged us out and permanently sealed the office doors." Minister of Manpower and Immigration Aisha Abdel-Hadi denies being behind the clamp-down. Minister of Social Solidarity El-Moselhi has also distanced himself, claiming that the centre doesn't fall under his jurisdiction since it isn't registered as an NGO. Meanwhile, the centre has started negotiations with the ministry in an attempt to find a solution. Whatever the haggling over the centre's legal status, few doubt the decision to close down CTUWS is politically motivated. "The authorities are clamping down on the centre now because they don't know how to deal with the waves of strikes that have rocked the country over the past six months," says Zakariya. "They need a scapegoat, so they are accusing us of inciting the workers to strike. But how can they accuse us of inciting the all 220 strikes estimated to have occurred in 2006?" "Egyptian workers don't need any incitement, decisions to strike are the result of failed government policies," says Aura-Misr worker Said Abdel-Latif, who in 2003 started a two-year struggle for wages and medical insurance at the Aura-Misr plant infamous for its use of asbestos on their production lines without alerting workers to the health hazards involved and without providing them with protective clothing." On 3 March 2006, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif promised that public sector worker annual bonuses would be increased from LE100 ($17) to the equivalent of two months' salary by the end of the year. The pledge never materialised and, as a result, the Al-Mahala Al-Kobra Misr Spinning and Weaving workers started a sit-in strike on 7 December. Other mills followed suit since when an estimated 104,000 textile workers have taken industrial action. Strikes spread to the Helwan and Tura cement factories, the railroad workers and a host of other industrial sectors. Faced with such unprecedented public sector worker action the government by and large complied with the workers' demands and fulfilled its earlier promises. Textiles comprise Egypt's largest industrial sector and its employees are among the world's worst paid. They make 85 per cent of the wages paid to comparable workers in Pakistan and 60 per cent of those paid in India, says labour historian Joel Beinin. The comparison is even more stark with workers in a regional, developed country such as Israel, where workers doing comparable jobs are paid 10 times as much. In addition to rock bottom salaries, employees across the industrial sector face appalling working conditions. Union representative Samira Hegazi, who works for Segwart, a lead pipe and cement block manufacturing plant, says that employees are regularly exposed to dangerous levels of lead fumes and cement particles which cause irreparable damage to lung tissues. "They work with their bare hands, without any kind of protective clothing. When I alerted the management and demanded they supply protective masks I was given the run around and told the company had no money to pay for extra frills. As for the government- controlled GFTU, they weren't interested in taking up the case. They don't even pretend to function as a union, they are totally useless." CTUWS activists believe the GFTU is behind the closure of their centre. GFTU President Hussein Megawer went on the offensive after Mahala Al-Kobra textile workers threatened to impeach him for having staged fraudulent union elections in October 2006. The CTUWS documented widespread fraud in last year's elections, describing them as "the worst in Egyptian trade union history". Megawer denounced CTUWS coordinator Kamal Abbas as a "foreign-funded agent" on the satellite TV channel Dream 2, arguing that his organisation should be shut down. Closure of the Naja Hamadi branch followed almost immediately. "Closing the CTUWS offices is a petty and illegal attempt to punish the group for exposing irregularities in the 2006 elections," commented Human Rights Watch. "The government should immediately reverse this misguided decision and fulfil its legal obligations [under international treaties to which Egypt is a signatory] to uphold the freedom of association and free speech." Despite the crackdown, CTUWS activists remain undaunted. "We were never office people," says Zakariya. "We will work in cafés if need be, but we'll continue to work."
