The Unified Labour Law continues to cause contention within labour circles, reports Fatemah Farag Gamal Abdu worked as an office boy at a Cairo-based embassy for six years, only to be fired in 2001. Since then, he has tried to appeal the loss of his livelihood, and demand compensation. When the Unified Labour Law was passed in 2003, things changed for Abdu, but not necessarily for the better. "Before the Unified Labour Law came into effect, all workers had the right to first take their complaints to the Labour Office in search of a peaceful settlement, then to courts of the first instance, and finally the Appeals Court. Today they are sent to the five-member committee, and then directly to the Appeals Court, depriving them of an important stage of arbitration," explained Karam Saber, director of the Land Centre for Human Rights. On Abdu's behalf, the centre has filed a case at the Constitutional Court, arguing that articles 70 and 71 of the Unified Labour Law are unconstitutional. "These articles are responsible for the formation of the five-member committee, which we argue is not a judicial committee, since it includes members from the business community," Saber said. Even before the Unified Labour Law was passed last year, the five- member committee was a point of contention between labour, government and business -- the three parties which were involved, in varying degrees, in the 10-year process it took to draft the law. A year after the law came into effect, critics of the committee idea said the situation on the ground had proven the legitimacy of their concerns. According to Khaled Ali of the Hisham Mubarak Legal Centre, because there are only eight appeals courts nationwide, over 1,000 cases have backlogged over the past year. "The removal of courts of the first instance from the process has therefore seriously impeded workers' access to courts," he said. Saber said the five-member committee rarely convenes. "Can you believe that, a year after the law was passed, the five-member committee has not even been formed in some judicial circles? Usually the problem is that not all five members attend, and as a result, our organisation alone has 300 cases pending." The five-member committee is but one of the law's points that labour activists continue to protest. Another sore spot is the fact that the Minimum Wage Committee, established last September, has yet to take action despite the steep increase in prices that has occurred since then. Others include the law's restrictions on strike actions and limited time contracts. The Constitutional Court is scheduled to rule on articles 70 and 71 on 18 September. "If we prove the articles are unconstitutional," Saber said, "legislative bodies will have to revise them."
