Workers involved in Egypt's current wave of industrial action are calling for greater solidarity, writes Serene Assir Following a lull that lasted over a decade, Egypt has been hit by a wave of industrial action since late 2004 that has picked up speed as it has travelled from sector to sector. Starting in large public-sector factories, notably in the textile sector in the Delta which has a long history of worker activism, this wave has differed from previous ones both by its spread to the private sector and then more recently by its extension to the country's professional classes. More than 20,000 Al-Azhar schoolteachers went on strike in June this year, for example, firmly asking that their demands be included in a proposed teachers' reform package. Although workers' demands have varied according to local conditions, underlying the recent wave of protests and sit-ins has been a common desire for an increase in the share workers receive of the country's prosperity. Egypt's economy has been improving on standard economic indicators over recent years, but the speed with which the country's elite has improved its position has contrasted starkly with workers' continued, or even increasing, disempowerment. Workers from industrial sectors across the country exchanged views on the current state of the unrest at a seminar hosted by the Centre for Socialist Studies in Cairo this week, among them workers from the Ghazl Al-Mahalla textile factory, which saw an overwhelming majority of its 27,000-strong workforce occupy the factory floor in December 2006. "You might say I was raised at Ghazl Al-Mahalla, since my father, may he rest in peace, worked there before me," said worker Mohamed Abdel-Azim. "But the sad thing is that while my father had enough to put his children through school, provide for them, buy a small plot of land and build a house, a worker today cannot even afford to pay for his own housing." This deprivation, made all the worse by the fact that it is relative, has given rise to many acts of protest. The two-month protest by the female-dominated workforce at the Mansoura- España garments factory, for example, fought against the threatened closure of the company and for workers' rights. On this occasion, the protest was successful. The industrial action that has taken place over recent months needs to be viewed within the wider context of the emergence of an unorganised, but considerable, movement at the grassroots level to secure financial, health, human and political rights. Protests by residents of the Qalaat Al-Kabsh district of Cairo whose homes were demolished by the government after fire destroyed the area and who have thus far received no new housing have indicated the mood among the country's underprivileged majority, for instance. Almost 250,000 workers have taken part in industrial action nationwide since December 2006, according to Kamal Khalil, a prominent member of the Revolutionary Socialists Party , and this wave of unrest has caught the attention of parties and organisations across the political spectrum. While the Muslim Brotherhood has remained conspicuously restrained on the matter, elements of the pro-democracy movement Kifaya have vocally sided with the workers. Workers attending last week's seminar said that the time was ripe for greater solidarity among workers, giving the workers' struggle, still in its formative phase, a political edge. "It should no longer be the case that if our own demands are met we stay silent about others," said Mohamed Abdel-Mounsif, a union representative at the Italcementi-owned Tora Cement factory. "We are witnessing new forms of imperialism today in the form of privatisation. Instead of weapons, money is being used to colonise Egypt. All the workers in the country must be united in their stand against this new form of imperialism." Thus far, the government has dealt with each piece of industrial action separately. Aside from the continued prohibition of independent syndicalism, and the implementation of a labour law that many rights activists have criticised, the government has responded only to individual actions, not to the wave as a whole. However, in cases where workers have succeeded in attaining their goals they have gathered the confidence to take their struggle further. The government may therefore face greater costs in the future should the wave of industrial unrest continue to escalate. The resistance the workers' action is unleashing in Egypt also demonstrates the impact of globalisation the world over and its rejection at the grassroots level. It remains to be seen how far Egyptian grassroots movements will resist, what effect such resistance will have on workers, and what consequences change will bring in the financial and political circumstances of the region.
