Labour Day in Cairo's Tahrir Square recreated the revolutionary spirit of 25 January, writes Faiza Rady "After the 25 January uprising, we are again witnessing history in the making today in Tahrir Square. This is the first time in 54 years that Egyptian workers have been free to celebrate May Day without the tutelage of the state-controlled Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions [EFTU]," said Adel Zakaria, a workers' rights activist with the Centre for Trade Union Services, in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. "Though at the end of the day an unfortunate incident somewhat dampened the festivities when a group of misguided young people jumped onto the stage and prevented labour activists Kamal Abbas and Kamal Abu Eita from delivering their speeches, we are satisfied that the workers conveyed their Labour Day messages to the country," Zakaria said. The Centre for Trade Union Services, or Al-Dar (the house) as it is dubbed in Arabic, was established in 1990 as a labour-advocacy NGO to provide an independent alternative to the EFTU. It promotes the rights of women in the labour force and provides legal services to workers, counselling them about their rights, organising educational workshops and reporting on labour-rights violations. On 30 January, Al-Dar and the Real Estate Tax Union, the first union to formally secede from the EFTU, together formed the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU). This was a historic moment because the EFITU is the first independent worker-run labour federation to be founded since former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser established state-control over the EFTU in 1957. Since 30 January this year, 250,000 workers have joined the new federation, and their numbers are on the increase. At Tahrir Square this May Day an estimated 100,000 workers and their supporters celebrated their hard-gained independence, while Egypt's interim government, including the ruling Higher Council of the Armed Forces, continued the Mubarak-era legacy of feting with the EFTU. The high-powered official meeting was sponsored by Ismail Fahmi, the federation's acting-president, because its president, Hussein Mugawer, has been detained on charges of homicide and illegal profiteering. Mugawer is accused of being among the organisers of the 2 February "Battle of the Camel", in which armed supporters of former president Mubarak rode into Tahrir Square on camelback, attacking and killing scores of demonstrators in their wake. Absent from both the EFTU meeting and Tahrir Square was Prime Minister Essam Sharaf. In a televised address to workers, Sharaf said that his government was exerting all its efforts to strengthen the economy, attract investment and create new jobs. In protest against the government's meeting with the EFTU, and its refusal to shut it down despite its well-established affiliation with the Mubarak regime and the now-disbanded former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), some 2,000 workers marched to the federation's downtown headquarters on Al-Galaa Street in Cairo. They chanted slogans condemning those who had "betrayed workers, sold factories for peanuts, and forced workers into early retirement and unemployment." Meanwhile, in Tahrir Square itself as hundreds of workers proudly held their placards high expressing labour demands, they recreated the militancy and sense of purpose of the 25 January Revolution. Red and yellow banners fluttered against the backdrop of the clear May sky, displaying messages of worker struggle and solidarity. However, the most visible and also the most astounding sight was the red banner of the Egyptian Communist Party (ECP), adorned with the hammer and sickle and the familiar slogan, "Workers of the World Unite". This public coming out of the ECP, forced to work underground since the mid-1970s because of severe repression, truly signalled a new era of freedom. As 25 January showed, shackles can be broken. "We salute Egyptian workers on this 1 May. This is your day, as it is the day of workers across the world. We salute your struggle for independence and freedom," read the ECP leaflet in reference to the workers' contribution to the success of the 25 January Revolution. Egyptian workers had joined the uprising from the start as individuals, but it was their collective participation as a workforce when tens of thousands joined the demonstrations on 8 February that finally tipped the balance and led to the overthrow of the Mubarak regime. It was the wave of industrial action that erupted across Egypt, when between 1998 and 2010 two million workers participated in demonstrations, sit-ins, strikes and other forms of collective struggle, that established a successful model of protest and ultimately made space for 25 January to occur. The theme of workers' impoverishment because of corporate greed and corruption, and the demand for a minimum monthly wage of LE1,200 reverberated across the square. Almost 14.2 million people, or 20 per cent of the Egyptian population, live on less than $1 a day, below the extreme poverty line. Tens of millions of others live below the $2 per day global poverty line set by the International Monetary Fund. One young woman held her poster high for everyone to see. "In the South, the poor die every day of the month," it read. Another poster read, "Capitalism in simple words = poverty policies." "We won't be ruled by the World Bank," read another poster bearing the signature of the Progressive Youth Union of the leftist Tagammu Party. Another poster bearing the words, "Strikes are a legal tool to fight poverty and hunger," defied the recently passed law that criminalises strikes, protests, demonstrations and sit-ins that "disrupt businesses or affect the economy." In a recent letter to Sharaf, general-secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITCU) Michael Sommer warned that the passage of this law "will lead to a legal disaster by all international labour standards and will disgrace Egypt in the view of the international community." Sommer reminded Sharaf that Egypt was a member of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and that the new law constituted a "serious infringement of fundamental trade union rights to which Egypt is bound by international treaties." Under the previous regime, the ILO had also blacklisted Egypt because of its violation of numerous ILO conventions. Among the most pressing of the workers' demands was the call to disband the EFTU and to put its leadership on trial. "We demand the right to freedom of association... we condemn the government's federation of thieves," read a banner signed by the independent Federation. "The EFTU was an arm of the Mubarak dictatorship, and it's as corrupt as the old regime," Abdel-Rahman Mahmoud, a real-estate tax worker from Sharqiya governorate told the Weekly. "We had to join the union whether we liked it or not, and union dues were forcibly deducted from our salaries. Like all other elections in the country, union elections were rigged. For candidates to run for office, they had to get the consent of the EFTU president and figure on a State Security list. And when they wanted to register as candidates, workers were given the bureaucratic run around. It was the EFTU, and not the workers, that selected the candidates of their choice." "On paper we have the right to strike, but the reality is different," said Fathi Attia, another worker. "The EFTU never approved our calls to strike." According to Egyptian labour historian Joel Beinin, the EFTU only approved two strikes in close to two decades: the 1993 national miners' strike called by the General Union of Mining, Construction and Carpentry, and the 2009 Tanta Flax and Oil Company strike. Al-Dar coordinator Kamal Abbas has taken legal steps to have the EFTU dissolved, claiming that it constitutes an appendage of the former regime. Abbas, and two other activists, are presently suing Sharaf, labour minister Ahmed Boraai, and the Higher Council of the Armed Forces for their decision not to disband the federation, basing their case on a ruling by the Higher Administrative Court that states that the "fall of the Mubarak regime also and necessarily entails the dissolution of all the relevant agencies which constituted its power base." Notwithstanding the high-powered EFTU support, Abbas is confident that the workers will win their case. "The discredited federation collapsed along with the regime," he said. In Tahrir Square on this year's Labour Day, tens of thousands of workers agreed.
