CAIRO: The International Federation of Trade Unions sent a protest letter directed to the Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf calling him to cancel the proposed ordinance that would consider sit-ins a criminal offense punishable with up to one-year in prison and a fine of up to $90,000. The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions has described the decree, which was approved by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces as “a serious and disturbing development.” The letter sees the draft decree as a “disaster” with all international labor standards, and that it would be a “shameful feature of Egypt in the eyes of the international community.” Sharan Burrow, the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said the implementation of this decree is “a betrayal of the Egyptian revolution.” “The deprivation of millions of Egyptian workers who continue to work for very weak wages of their right to strike, which is a fundamental right under international law, would remove one of the essential means for workers to achieve economic and social justice,” she said in a press release from the ILO. “And with the suppression of this legal trade union activity, this will also suffocate the development of a vibrant civil society that Egypt needs to build democracy,” she added. The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions had welcomed the serious efforts exerted by the Egyptian Minister of Manpower and Immigration, and the Egyptian Minister of Finance to conduct dialogue and negotiations with workers in some sectors and locations, but it has requested from the authorities to proceed in dealing with workers as “citizens, not just things.” According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), this was welcomed by the official Union “the Mubarak era”, pointing out that it is in line with the Labor Law No. 12 of the year 2003, which was imposed by Egypt's former President Mubarak and supported by the Federation of Trade Unions of Egypt. “The workers are in no need of the remnants of the former regime who had lost credibility, and are not representing anyone to speak on their behalf,” said ANHRI. “They are like other workers everywhere. They are fully able to dispose their own unions, but they can do so effectively only if the authorities refused the old habits of the past of anti-democracy,” added Burrow. BM
