CAIRO – Egypt's revolution has left Tahrir Square to show up all over the country, including in the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which has seen a board, many of whose members were loyal to the former regime, thrown out and replaced by a new, more revolutionary one. "The revolution has made itself strongly felt inside the union,” said Kamal Abu Eitta, a leading labour activist. “But let me be clear on this: our revolution is not complete yet,” he told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. The battle inside the ETUF these days is over purging the union and freeing it of what like-minded people call the "remnants of the Mubarak regime". This seems to be happening nationwide. The ETUF scenario has already been played out inside some of the nation's insurance companies, aluminium factories and State-run hospitals. The removal of Mubarak, who ruled for 30 years, has emboldened the nation to take action, and serious action at that. "There is a plan to destroy this country's professional unions," says Ismail Fahim, the former ETUF Chairman. Abu Eitta, however, hasn't got time to waste on this argument. He and his colleagues filed a lawsuit against the union, which had been under Government control for years. They won the case a few days ago, kicking out the old board and replacing it. Prior to this, they had founded their own independent labour union to open the way for real representation for the nation's workers, while the old union did nothing to represent them. "The real challenge for Egypt's professional syndicates and unions is for these entities to represent their own members," says Seham Shawadah, a labour unrest specialist. "The sad thing is that they never did this properly because of their total compliance to the former ruling party." Labour unrest was rife even before the revolution, as hundreds of thousands of workers streamed onto the streets to protest their low salaries and lack of political emancipation. Abu Eitta himself led some of these protests for workers' rights. A real estate tax collector himself, he led his colleagues during their weeks of protest outside the Egyptian Parliament more than two years ago, to protest low salaries and harsh working conditions. "We are not in the business of demanding higher salaries now," he said. "We, however, are in the business of demanding more dignity for the nation's workers." What spurred Abu Eitta and his colleagues into action against the ETUF was its recklessness in dealing with the workers' problems. Abu Eitta said the members of the board of the old union turned a deaf ear to the workers' problems. "Now the workers will never give up their demand for unions that really represent them," Shawadah adds. Several other segments of society have expressed a similar resolve to establish institutions that satisfy their needs and express their demands. But this has caused discomfort to officials in long-established institutions, including the professional unions, who used to consider themselves the sole representatives of their members.
