Some hotels and tourist villages in southern Sinai and some floating hotels in the Nile between Luxor and Aswan had to lay off casual laborers as a result of a decline in the occupancy rate in the aftermath of the world financial crisis. Workers of a hotel in Hurghada threatened to stage an open strike on New Year's Eve in protest. The Tourism Ministry has warned of this move and called on the hotels not to lay off laborers.
Some hotels gave casual laborers leaves and paid their basic salary (not more than LE 300) or 50% of it without paying the service fee, some 12% of the guest's bill, a figure which increases the salaries of the workers in the hotel six times of the basic salary. In addition, hotels in Hurghada, Sharm el-Sheikh and Dahab began to lay off workers without giving them any rights.
In a related development, workers of Sofitel Hurghada said they would stage a strike on New Year's Eve if the management did not stop what they described as "persecution and humiliation", which reached the extent of beating them with shoes and forcing them to work more than 16 hours a day without extra pay in violation of the labor law to force them to leave their jobs. For his part, the Ministry of Tourism undersecretary for control over hotels and tourist villages Ahmed Attiya said the ministry has not received any reports from its offices to this effect. Vice-Chairman of the Chamber of hotels at the Egyptian Federation of Industries Abdel Rahman Anwar called on the government represented in the Ministry of Social Insurance and the Emergency Fund to support the hotel sector.
