Property tax workers halt their protests, for now at least, reports Serene Assir Ten days after a round-the-clock sit-in in the heart of Cairo, and more than three months after launching a nationwide work to rule, property tax workers have brokered a deal with Minister of Finance Youssef Boutros Ghali. Following talks with worker-appointed negotiators, officials have agreed to begin implementing the strikers' demands, beginning next month. "We have put the sit-in on hold," says Kamal Abu Ayta, a veteran unionist and one of the property tax workers' negotiators. "Our position is clear: either they begin to implement the minister's decision to ensure we are paid at the same rate as other tax workers beginning 9 January, or we resume the sit-in." Egypt's 55,000 property tax workers have been on strike since September 2007. They have organised four separate sit-ins, most recently in front of the Cabinet of Ministers building, often accompanied by their families as they camped in the street. The discrepancies in the pay of property tax workers and others in the tax sector date back to 1974 when they were removed from the Ministry of Finance's central payroll by the then minister Abdel-Aziz Hegazi, allegedly after it was made public that Hegazi's mother had failed to pay property tax. They now earn up to 10 times less than workers doing similar jobs but paid centrally by the ministry rather than by governorate offices, with many earning as little as LE200 a month. Telephone negotiations between Abu Ayta and Ghali, during which the minister pledged to begin to implement the workers' financial demands, began on 13 December. "We don't expect the increase to come in one go but we do expect some immediate action," Ahmed Sabr, a protester from Tanta, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "For the moment we are satisfied that the authorities have started to take our demands seriously." Workers say Ghali has promised to fast track long-postponed legislation to reintegrate the property tax sector within his ministry. "Given the public nature of the promises the ministry is unlikely to go back on its word," Abu Ayta told the Weekly. "The fact is that we took matters into our own hands because our demands had been consistently brushed aside. We could not survive on our salaries and had no choice but to take action. By the same token, the government now has no choice but to act." The strikers are now convinced that when, on 9 January, they return to Hussein Hegazi Street -- which they effectively occupied for 10 days -- it will be to celebrate a victory. Though their action came in the wake of a wave of successful industrial strikes in Egypt they are only the second group of public sector professionals to take to the streets to press their demands, following last June's demonstrations by thousands of Al-Azhar school teachers seeking pay increases. Many analysts, though, see the property tax workers' action as breaking new ground, certainly in terms of the determination displayed by public sector white-collar workers. The 10-day sit-in in front of the Cabinet office may, as many commentators have noted, represent the first consistent, public action by workers in any sector barring the occupation of factories: for the protesters, though, their action came in response to the increasingly blatant disparity in incomes afflicting Egyptian society. The arithmetic, they insist, is simple: in the face of rampant inflation they can no longer support themselves, let alone their families, on the meagre salaries they are paid. The same calculations are made by millions of families every day. "It is a sad reality across the Arab world that conditions are being created which impoverish us all," Abu Ayta told the Weekly. "This is why it is important that we stand up for ourselves at key moments like this."
