Workers' Movement in Egypt & Tunisia
Fact-sheet and Study
[Hossam el-Hamalawy, in his MRZine article on 12.02.2011 wrote, "...The workers have been staging the longest and most sustained strike wave in Egypt's history since 1946, triggered by the Mahalla strike in December 2006. It's not the workers' fault that you were not paying attention to their news. Every single day over the past three years there was a strike in some factory whether it's in Cairo or the provinces. ...". Well. In the last issue (Dec 2010) of this magazine we published a rather lengthy editorial piece titled "All the Same in Workers' Front!" However, we did not cover the workers' movement in Egypt there, because the focus was on the happenings in the workers' front in India and Europe. We are not sure whether Hossam will spare us from his rebuke for not paying attention to workers of Egypt, but in this issue we are trying to cover the recent movement of workers of Egypt, to examine whether Egypt fit in the new trend of workers' movement and if so, how. We shall also visit another African country — Tunisia. Editorial Board, FAPP]
Commentators on Egypt's recent changes termed the workers' movement there as the Largest Social Movement in the Arab World that has been gathering steam since, roughly, 2006. The events there, particularly from January 25 till February 11 this year (the fall of Mubarak), are so well known now that they need not be retold. In the beginning let us present the points briefly covered in this piece of writing and the readers may skip the points well known to them: (1) the Nasser era of Arab Socialism and the position of workers and then the turn taken by Sadat-Mubarak regime, opening the economy more and more to imperialism and its impact; (2) the new era — 2004 to 2010 end including (A) the turning point of workers' struggle in 2006, (B) workers' independent actions and formation of their own independent organisations, (C) economic as well as political demands raised by the workers; (3) 2011 January, February, March; (4) some idea about the way ahead. Then we shall visit Tunisia which kindled what may be called the ?Arabian Night-Endings' which is no less fascinating than the ?Arabian Nights'.
The Backdrop
In 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser and some young army officers calling themselves the Free Officers toppled the Egyptian monarchy and established a Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). Many workers enthusiastically supported the military regime because the Free Officers promised full Egyptian independence, social justice, and the abolition of "feudalism". However, the Free Officers showed their intolerance towards workers struggle from the inception. On August 12 and 13, 1952, the 9,000 workers at the Misr Fine Spinning and Weaving Company conducted a strike — all they wanted were a freely elected union, removal of some ill-mannered managers, and the satisfaction of some economic demands. The army quickly intervened to crush them. A rapidly convened military tribunal convicted 13 workers. Eleven received prison sentences; and two workers were sentenced to death and executed on September 7 — this happened within 7 weeks after Nasser's ascension to power.
The Nasser regime can most politely be termed as a benevolent-looking dictatorship with pseudo socialist cum pan Arabist ideas. The govt made layoffs difficult, increase some benefits, but strikes were declared illegal except having the blessings of govt authorised and govt made Central Trade Union — the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) — created in 1957 as Egyptian Workers Federation (EWF) and renamed in 1962. Without being an authorised local body of that same ETUF no trade unions could be formed anywhere. The ETUF was overtly an arm of the state machine. The Nasser era saw lots of nationalisations, some land reform arrangement (more than double of the ?celebrated' land reform of Bengal by capacity and reach — affecting some one-sixth or so of total arable land), green revolution measures including increased irrigation, some sort of industrialisation and paved the way for ?development' ? as Indians we may keep in mind that Egypt is more industrially developed than India, at least by the percentage of workforce engaged in industry; and in agriculture too, in terms of agricultural yield it was way ahead of Punjab or Haryana even a decade back and had reached European benchmark; plus, as regards per capita income or per capita GDP in PPP (purchasing power parity) calculations Egypt is much ahead of India, Egypt scores very nearly twice the Indian figure!
For the story of the next period, the Sadat — Mubarak regime, for the sake of brevity, we shall take excerpts from "The Struggle for Worker Rights IN EGYPT, Solidarity Centre, Copyright © February 2010 by the Solidarity Centre"— of course keeping in mind that the Solidarity Centre is funded by the notorious imperialist backed NGO, the National Endowment for Democracy [we are changing spellings from En-US to En-UK]. "Presidents Anwar al-Sadat (1970-81) and Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011) reversed Nasser's economic and political orientation and turned towards free enterprise and alliance with the United States. Sadat's 1974 "Open Door" economic policy encouraged foreign direct investment and local entrepreneurs, and it sought to cut back the public sector following the neoliberal "Washington Consensus" economic policies promoted by the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. Washington Consensus policies undermine fundamental worker rights by seeking to create a "flexible labour market," making it easier to fire workers, weakening unions, and reducing public expenditures on health care, education, pensions, unemployment benefits, infrastructure, salaries of government workers, .... ...in the fall of 1976, President Sadat implemented its [IMF's] recommendation to dramatically reduce subsidies on basic consumer commodities. The announcement of the new policy prompted nationwide "bread riots" on January 18-19, 1977. The government backed off and restored the subsidies. [But] Almost all subsidies have been gradually eliminated since then. Higher prices, falling real wages, and a sharp rise in workers' collective protests in 1984-89 accompanied the implementation of Washington Consensus policies. For example, the government doubled public-sector workers' mandatory wage deductions for their health and pension plans. When the new law was applied to them in October 1984, tens of thousands of textile workers in Kafr al-Dawwar and their families erupted in a three-day urban insurrection, cutting telephone lines, setting fires, blocking transportation, and destroying train cars before a massive crackdown by security forces restored order. At the Iron and Steel Company in the southern Cairo industrial suburb of Helwan, where 25,000 workers were employed, the local trade union committee refused to support their demand for a raise in the incentive pay rate. Activist worker representatives on the company board of directors led the fight. They were fired, provoking two sit-in protests in July and August 1989.The second was dispersed by security forces, which killed one worker and severely injured hundreds more in the process. During the 1984-89 wave of collective protests, several alternative newspapers and organizations emerged to give workers a voice outside the framework of the state dominated ETUF. Most of these publications and organizations did not survive the 1990s, when the Mubarak regime became even less tolerant of labour dissidence. ... In 1991 Egypt concluded Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Program (ERSAP) agreements with the IMF and World Bank. ... By mid-2002, 190 firms were privatized. ... In July 2004 President Hosni Mubarak appointed a new cabinet headed by Dr. Ahmad Nazif. The Nazif government accelerated the sell-off of the public sector, privatizing a record 17 enterprises during its first year in office." Naturally work load, retrenchment or lay off, hiring-and-firing increased, price rise, particularly food-price-rise and unemployment soared very high. Unemployment, by govt estimate hovered round 10% which was obviously a greatly diluted figure. Real wages fell, benefits became trivial in the high-cost environ. We may feel the condition of life of the workers from a TIME report: As Mubarak Visits U.S., Strikes Cripple Egypt By Abigail Hauslohner/Al-Mahalla al-Kubra, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009: ""Everything in the country is expensive, and most workers work two jobs, and still, it's not enough," says Wael Habib, a Mahalla strike leader."
Amidst such intolerable situation something was indeed brewing. Such a high-status bourgeois magazine as TIME commented in that very article, though in passing, "While some see the Nile Delta strike wave as nothing more than a fight for daily bread, others say they're a portent of what's to come." [http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1916908,00.html]
The New Times Arrives
Again for brevity in presentation let us quote some figures from the aforesaid report of the Solidarity Centre, let figures themselves speak. After a gasping gap period of near-silence for some years the workers started entering the arena. This table below shows number of workers participated in different actions in different years:
Year | Strikes | Gatherings | Sit-Ins | Demo | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2004 | 4,773 | 35,243 | 321,107 | 25,223 | 386,346 |
2005 | 19,564 | 86,191 | 20,430 | 14,990 | 141,175 |
2006 | 85,009 | 34,229 | 70,994 | 7,856 | 198,088 |
2007 | 223,030 | 116,722 | 117,457 | 17,629 | 474,838 |
2008 | 62,791 | 364,257 | 86,474 | 27,901 | 541,423 |
Year 2006 was termed as the year of change by labour activists there — in December that year at Ghazl al-Mahalla 25000 workers of Misr Spinning and Weaving factory started a strike — an illegal strike that was as that was not authorised by the ETUF — and they succeeded in their fight. It is to be noted again that every single workers' actions, be that a strike or a peaceful gathering or sit-in or etc was perceived by the govt almost as an act of sedition and armed forces were always ready to pounce on the workers. The Misr Spinning and Weaving workers again conducted a strike in September 2007 and marched forward. The success of the Misr Spinning and Weaving workers enthused workers all over Egypt. Other workers followed suit and the situation started changing. The most prominent strike action of 2007-08 was that of 55,000 municipal real estate tax collectors. In their movement, at one time, about 3,000 municipal real estate tax collectors and their family members sat for 11 days in front of the Ministry of Finance and other government offices in downtown Cairo.
To describe the events of 6th April 2008 — the first ?call' of general strike — even a dozen pages will not suffice. The Ghazl al-Mahalla workers decided for strike action on that day. Several members of intelligentsia were inspired by the workers' fights, their tenacity, courage, determination and the yet unformulated or undocumented goal of the workers. These members of intelligentsia formed an internet group — The April 6th Committee — they issued a call for general strike ? though they were just novices as far as workers struggle is concerned, and then who were they to ?call' a general strike. It may be noted that this April 6th Committee was instrumental in starting and staging the 2011 Tahrir Square episode. We are only quoting a fraction of what was reported in http://www.arabawy.org/tag/textile-workers-league/, otherwise readers may feel deprived.
<<UPDATE: A message from my friend Alia in Cairo... After stifling the Mahalla workers' strikes this morning, and making movement and mobilization in Cairo and other governorates almost impossible on account of random arrests, government forces have proceeded to stifle newsfeeds. Besides a wide-spread striking through-out Cairo, significant mobilization has in fact taken place throughout Mahalla and has been retaliated to with much violence.
UPDATE: Sarah Carr reports from Mahalla...
... Live ammunition was allegedly used to quell the massive protest, killing a 20-year-old male activist and a nine-year-old boy. Eye-witnesses in Mahalla also said that the security forces used stun batons to electrocute protestors and paralyze them temporarily. ... "Clashes between security bodies and Ghazl El-Mahalla began when the workers refused directives by security bodies ? who number some 50,000 [by the way — the town has a population of nearly 500,000 — fapp] ? ordering them to return to their homes," the message reads. ...security bodies used batons and teargas to break up the protest when protestors began chanting anti-government slogans, condemning price increases of basic foodstuffs.
Here's also a report ... on the downtown Cairo protests... Over a thousand social and political activists, as well as unaffiliated citizens, gathered inside the Lawyers' Syndicate yesterday as part of the April 6 strikes, calling for immediate government intervention to bring down food prices and raise wages. ... ... At the universities, the picture was similar, with large numbers of police security guarding not only the main gates but open spaces within the university grounds. ... According to sources at Helwan University, security forces blocked the main gates .... In the Lawyer's Syndicate forecourt, angry demonstrators chanted slogans expressing their acute discontent with the current regime, and their support for the demands of the workers of Ghazl El-Mahalla. ...
UPDATE: During Mahalla's afternoon clashes with the police, Gehan Sha'aban, reports that the children were "throwing rocks ... against Central Security Forces officers and soldiers, while chanting ?The revolution has come! The revolution has come!'" ...UPDATE: I received a message of solidarity from the Manchester Trades Unions Council... [I'm very short of time... Can anybody translate it into Arabic, please ...>> So, that was April 6, 2008.
Well, the table above (Page 72) shows workers' actions till 2008 — and for 2009 two reports will suffice:
"As of 30 October 2009, the Land Centre for Human Rights ... had documented 117 strikes and 170 other labour protests in 2009." [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/egypt/labor.htm]
(2) "In 2009 alone, according to a report released by Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights and Children of Earth Foundation for Human Rights, there were a total of 478 industrial actions by workers, including 184 sit-ins, 123 strikes, 79 demonstrations and 27 rallies." [http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/08/rising-class-struggle]
For the year 2010, according to the aforementioned TIME article (written in mid-August), "By some estimates, Egypt has seen at least 250 strike actions this year alone, organized locally and often featuring women workers playing a leading role."
Involvement of more and more women workers and family members were making the situation more difficult to handle for the security forces.
A
Fights=650 words
2010 December report says: "Beyond strikes, sit-ins and street protests, other recorded incidents of labour unrest included a handful of hunger strikes and boss-nappings, along with the occasional blocking-off of roads and highways by disgruntled workers. In May, over a thousand workers that had been conducting sleep-in protests outside of Egypt's parliament, Shura Council (consultative house of parliament) and Council of Ministers were assaulted, threatened with arrest, and forcibly dispersed by police. One of the largest strikes to have been seen this year is a countrywide truck drivers' strike that began on 10 December involving some 70,000 truck owners and drivers. ... Owners and drivers of Egypt's micro-buses, too, are similarly protesting the imposition of new taxes. ... Egypt's micro-bus owners and drivers may well maintain their sporadic strikes into next year. Strikes have even spread to some sectors that had no prior experience of labour unrest, such as a workers' strike at the American University in Cairo in October, in which some 150 university workers demanded pay raises and paid weekends. Other notable incidents ... included strikes, sit-ins and sleep-ins conducted by some 32,000 employees of Information Decision Support Centres, which are affiliated to the Local Development Ministry. ..." [http://she2i2.blogspot.com/2010/12/egyptian-labor-unrest-throughout-2010.html] By 2010 a phenomenon had already developed — large continuous congregation of workers, sometimes with their families, for days or even weeks, on the squares or broader roads in front of important govt buildings in Cairo — perhaps unknowingly creating precedence for the future Tahrir Square.
From Workers' Independent Actions to Formation of Independent Organisations
And the first one, in a sense, contrary to now popular belief, was not that of the municipal tax collectors. It was the Textile Workers League that was formed around March 2007.
The Ghazl al-Mahalla workers demanded removal of their TU leadership committee servile to the management and conducted their struggle by their own made Strike Committee. They wrote to the EUTF central body, signed a petition to EUTF, and even 2 bus load of workers travelled all the way to Cairo on January 30, 2007, to the ETUF headquarters. Acrimonious exchanges, heated quarrels followed where workers shouted ?liars, liars' to the top leaders. They gave an ultimatum of 2 weeks for removal of present factory TU leadership and after they had left they registered a complaint at a police station in Cairo regarding that day's events. [http://www.arabawy.org/2007/01/30/mahalla-textile-workers-slam-their-general-union-officials/] The dateline passed, the ETUF leadership did nothing. Impatient workers, in thousands, tore up their membership cards. Now evolved the Textile Workers League — unrecognised by both the govt and ETUF — but they did not bother recognition. The existence of this organisation can be proved even by foreign sources:
(i) "To: Textile Workers League, Mahalla, 7 April 2008 "Dear Sisters and Brothers, Solidarity with the Mahalla textile workers
"On behalf of Manchester Trades Union Council, I am writing to express our solidarity with your struggle. As we read the reports of your battles yesterday, 6 April, we are inspired by your courage and determination.
"Across the world we are seeing unending attacks on workers as governments and employers try to keep wages down while prices rise. In Britain too we have experience of this and we are also fighting back. ... In Egypt, where the history of exploitation and oppression has been particularly bitter, the struggle of the Mahalla workers encourages us all to keep fighting.
"Please keep us informed and let us know how we can assist you. "In solidarity, Geoff Brown, Secretary"
[http://www.arabawy.org/tag/textile-workers-league/]
(ii) "As Mubarak Visits U.S., Strikes Cripple Egypt [TIME report: As Mubarak Visits U.S., Strikes Cripple Egypt By Abigail Hauslohner/Al-Mahalla al-Kubra, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009]
"...Many of the strikes are called by the Independent Textile Workers' League, which operates like a union but without official recognition."
"Then came the news of — The Society for Private Sector Workers, it was in 2007 — In other developments... I'm still trying to confirm this, but I'm told more than 30,000 Textile workers from the private sector companies who've been lobbying with little success for union representation for more than a decade, announced Monday evening they are establishing an association under the name "The Society for Private Sector Workers." ...." [http://www.arabawy.org/tag/textile-workers-league/]
Hossam, in Aug 15, 2008 wrote: "Though the blue collar workers ignited the fight to build the independent labour unions in January 2007, it's now the white collar workers (who in cases are even poorer than their blue collar brethren) that are spearheading the fight......"
[http://www.arabawy.org/2008/08/15/towards_free_unions/]
The fighting municipal tax collectors made history in the sense that they formed their own independent Trade Union ?RETA' and got it recognised by the government. Its chief, Kamal Abou Aita, told in a recent interview, "In 2007, we took a first step, by organising a group of workers and calling a strike. The response was very positive, with over 50,000 workers taking part. We set up 29 strike committees in each governorate and a coordinating committee here in Cairo. We were the first public sector employees in history to hold a strike outside the workplace, and we marched to the parliament building. The Finance Ministry finally gave in to our demands and we secured pay rises and better promotion opportunities. Following the success of the strike, we held discussions with the general and local strike committees, and they all agreed to become trade unions, in all the regions." [http://www.ituc-csi.org/spotlight-interview-with-kamal.html] In 2008 the new union was formed. It was not at all smooth sailing, many resistances came from the govt machinery including arrests, legal hassles, forming a parallel TU for the tax-collecting staff by the ETUF, etc but they could hold on.
In the 2011 famous Tahrir Square permanent-public-assembly a new independent TU, a central TU Federation, was announced. Thereafter several independent TUs have been forming. "Thursday, March 24, 2011; Public Transport Workers Establish Independent Union! Egypt's newest trade union was established on Thursday; the Independent Union of Public Transport Authority Workers. Hundreds of PTA workers attended the inauguration and preparatory conference of their independent trade union - at the Journalists' Syndicate. Joining this union are 60,000 bus-drivers, conductors, mechanics, and engineers employed in the PTA - from across greater Cairo. Tens of thousands have rallied for the establishment of representative, accountable and democratically-elected trade union committees. Workers voted to break away from the General Union of Land Transport Workers, a yellow union within the (state-controlled) Egyptian Trade Union Federation. This new union is the fifth independent association to be established since 1957. Over the course of the past two years five independent unions came into being:
# The Real Estate Tax Authority Employees' Union, # The Independent Teachers' Syndicate, # Egyptian Health Technologists' Syndicate, # Pensioners' Federation; And today # the Independent Union of the Public Transport Authority Workers. # The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) - a confederation of the first four associations - was established on January 30th" [from http://www.diigo.com/]
As we see, the fighting workers' first step was action — fighting, and for that the most convenient organisations that they formed were strike committees and/or other informal type of association or league to carry on their struggle. Right to struggle and organise independently became a popular demand among all workers.
Common demands of all workers or class demands started to surface from the spontaneous economic battle of the workers in different factories and one such demand was/is that of a minimum wage 1200 LE (Egyptian Pound) or roughly $200 a month — and that first came up probably from Mahalla 2008 [ www.arabawy.org/2008/.../20000-demonstrate-in-mahalla-for-minimum-wage/] and it has now became popular along with another — minimum to maximum wage ratio should be 1:15 — as was heard in this year's May Day rallies. Demands for re-nationalisation are also heard.
Leadership from Below in conjunction with Organisations from Below
As we have already seen, the workers independent organisations were the creations of the workers themselves — those organisations came into being from below. New sets of leaders did also come up from below. We shall meet one such leader to hear what he says.
"Tareq Mustafa, RETAU's Treasurer, ... describes the interactions between the network of activists in the Property Tax Authority who led the 2007 strike at a national level, and the workplace-based leaders who mobilised tens of thousands of their colleagues to strike and demonstrate as well as reflecting on how the notion of ?leadership' itself among these activists has challenged conventional expectations of who should be a leader. "In our experience the process was clear. The leadership took a clear method of trying to build from below. That gave us a good chance of success, and we actually did succeed, we managed to spread our resources effectively. So the leadership was able to help the people below support the leadership above ... The proof is that in every governorate there is a leadership, and below that workplace-based leaderships as well. So leadership comes from below. People reacted favourably to this leadership in the strike, it was very clear that the people would have this positive reaction in the strike, because the leadership was following the correct path, because it came from below, not from above. [Such a leader will] be someone, for example, who has the approval of his colleagues and in the workplace — an activist, someone who is taking steps beyond his colleagues. He is the one who can encourage them, he is the one who can convince them, and who can organise them ... Someone who takes the initiative ... speaks his mind, gives positive suggestions, can make himself understood. He has a degree of consciousness, and is more conscious than his colleagues. This is all clarified, all put to the test, on the day of the strike or the sit-in by how many people he can bring with him. Take me personally, for example. I'm on the committee in my governorate, but I'm only Grade 3 [in my job], and the people with me on the committee are Grades 1 and 2, but they are under my leadership. It isn't about your grade in your job. It is about the effort you put in, the work you do, how well you are accepted by other people, your grasp of the issue, how effectively you can mobilise others.""
Why the Workers went for Forming their Independent Organisation instead of Veering to Established Opposition Parties?
This question puzzled the Egyptian established opposition political parties or groups that were present for years or decades. As a keen observer of Egyptian labour movement Prof Joel Beinin's observation was interesting: "Even so ... most of Egypt's strike leaders don't belong to political parties, and doubts that Egypt's opposition groups will be able to channel workers' dissent into a unified push for political change." [Source is the same aforementioned TIME article of mid-Aug 2009.] And this doubt was present among democratic minded intelligentsia.
Imperialists were concerned and worried too — not only because of workers not joining a potential bourgeois-democratic change in Egypt for formation of a parliamentary republic — but also, left to themselves, workers' independent movements and their attitude may turn to something very troublesome for the big masters of the world. A Carnegie Endowment programme has been researching on this subject for quite some time and their first findings were uploaded in the internet in January 28, 2011: "Protest Movements and Political Change in the Arab World", by Marina Ottaway and Amr Hamzawy. We quote the relevant portion from that. "In terms of attitudes toward the formal political process, workers and young activists in Egypt have viewed opposition political parties as untrustworthy and obsolete organizations. Protest leaders have been careful to distance collective action from political parties, strongly denying any alleged links. This distrust is in part due to the perception that parties would attempt to impose their own agenda on the protests instead of advancing the workers' and the activists' demands. Furthermore, while the Egyptian government often responds to protest based on social and economic grievances by making salary concessions or promising to increase state subsidies, it promptly puts down political protest. As a result, contacts and coordination with political parties have been extremely limited, causing workers' demands to remain primarily social and economic. One of the most telling episodes is that of the strike at al-Mahalla al Kubra in 2008. Because of its scale, the strike attracted the attention of a number of opposition parties and movements, ranging from the leftist Tagammu Party to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Kefaya Movement, all of which tried to become involved. All were rejected. In other countries, the separation between leaders of socio-economic protest episodes, on one side, and political parties, movements, and civil society organizations, on the other, is not as sharp as in Egypt." The sentence — "Furthermore ... political protest" — is nonsense as we shall see workers did raise political demands, took political actions in spite of governmental oppression.
Workers' Political Demands & Actions
We have already seen interwoven economic-and-political demands in the April 6, 2008 movement. Here we shall simply place some more pictures.
# By September 2007, the workers had still not received the bonus agreed as part of the settlement, worth 150 days pay. A mass meeting of 10,000 workers decided to strike and occupy. Despite threats of police, army and prosecution 10,000-15,000 slept on the premises. During the day, over 20,000 workers were present, organising their own security guards and food deliveries.
The strikers demanded pay rises in line with inflation, affordable housing and the resignation of the official trade union leaders. "We want a change in the structure and hierarchy of the union system in this country," said Mohammed El Attar, one of the strike leaders. "The way unions are organised is completely wrong, from top to bottom. It is organised to make it look like our representatives have been elected, when really they are in fact appointed by the government."
Workers in Kafr al-Dawwar textile mill near Alexandria struck in solidarity for several hours and Grain Mill workers demonstrated. Workers organised collections across Egypt. After a week the Mahalla workers won a stunning victory. Many workers saw the political nature of their strike, with placards against Mubarak and slogans at the meetings including, "We will not be ruled by the World Bank! We will not be ruled by colonialism!" [http://www.socialistalternative.org/news...1521]
# Egypt: Workers strike against Israel exports; February 17th, 2009
In an unprecedented action, the first following the recent Israeli war on Gaza, workers of an Egyptian Fertilizers Company in Suez protested on Saturday February 7th against the export of fertilizers to Israel. ...In Egypt things are changing very fast, especially in the last three years, solidarity movements with Palestine and labour movements are taking more and more actions against the Egyptian regime in solidarity with Palestine and also for labour rights in Egypt. [http://www.tadamon.ca/]
# The current strike wave [2010 June — fapp] is not just about economic demands, but politics is also involved. The strike wave is also reshaping the consciousness of sections of the Egyptian working class.
Another example could be seen above in the video, where workers from Tanta Flax, Amonsito and Mahalla denounce the Israeli deadly attack on the Gaza aid convoy. These workers started their fight over local grievances related their own specific factories over the past few years. But by time their consciousness have gone through transformation, helping some of them to look at the bigger picture, to start linking their factory grievances with the overall state policy, to start drawing parallels between the state's policy towards them, with that of Israel vis a vis the Palestinians, and to start organizing, like in the video above, in support of the Palestinians while continuing fighting for their own specific demands... [http://www.arabawy.org/2010/06/04/politicization_workers/]
# "Demands of the Iron and Steel Workers [published on Feb 10, 2011]
1. Immediate resignation of the president and all men and symbols of the regime.
2. Confiscation of funds and property of all symbols of previous regime and everyone proved corrupt.
3. Iron and steel workers, who have given martyrs and militants, call upon all workers of Egypt to revolt from the regime's and ruling party workers' federation, to dismantle it and announce their independent union now, and to plan for their general assembly to freely establish their own independent union without prior permission or consent of the regime, which has fallen and lost all legitimacy.
4. Confiscation of public-sector companies that have been sold or closed down or privatized, as well as the public sector which belongs to the people and its nationalization in the name of the people and formation of a new management by workers and technicians.
5. Formation of a workers' monitoring committee in all workplaces, monitoring production, prices, distribution and wages.
6. Call for a general assembly of all sectors and political trends of the people to develop a new constitution and elect real popular committees without waiting for the consent or negotiation with the regime.
A huge workers' demonstration will join the Tahrir Square on Friday, the 11th of February 2011 to join the revolution and announce the demands of the workers of Egypt.
Long live the revolution! Long live Egypt's workers! ..." [http://www.indypendent.org/2011/02/10/workers-take-center-stage-in-egypt/]
In the last example it is indeed difficult to segregate a single economic demand!
# At the end one more example, a recent one — Egypt: Oil and Gas Workers on Strike by Hossam el-Hamalawy: Thousands of workers from several oil and gas companies are on strike, protesting in front of the Ministry of Petroleum, in Nasr City. The workers have several economic and political demands, including putting an end to abusive management practices such as sacking workers who speak up for their rights, reinstating the sacked workers, raising salaries that roughly average LE400, establishing an independent union, impeaching the corrupt oil minister Sameh Fahmy, and stopping gas exports to Israel. [http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/hamalawy130211.html]
But where from these political consciousness, as displayed in these pictures, came? Where from the workers' political consciousness developed if not from accumulated social knowledge continuously developing by summing up their own experiences? Had the workers not been summing up their own experiences and reaching conclusions, and actions, as were evident?
The 2011 Jan-Feb Episode
It is indeed true that the main initiative behind the Tahrir Square gathering that started from 25th January came from the intelligentsia, including the "6th April Movement". But soon enough, even the bourgeois media observed, the workers came at the centre-stage. A net posting of 1st February noted — "...yesterday ... In Alexandria, no less than two hundred thousand people were demonstrating. In Mahalla, about 150 thousand people were on the streets. In Suez and Mansoura, Fayoum, and many other major cities numbers were about 40 to 50 thousands at least." [http://www.solidarity-us.org/current/node/3149]
Workers put forward demand of overthrow of the present regime along with demands of minimum wage and their other economic demands. A fresh strike wave started from Feb 2. Workers' struggle gave a massive impetus to the anti-govt protest countrywide.
After Mubarak was forced to resign, the interim command went overtly at the hand of the army. The army and the govt sternly ordered workers against industrial actions including, first and foremost, strikes. But the workers bravely defied the order and are continuing their fights including strike actions (as for example — 10 Apr 2011 ... 7000 workers at six companies affiliated to the Suez Canal authority have been on strike since Monday 4th April; 18 Apr 2011 ... Egypt post workers strike defies state; 6 May 2011 ... The railway workers' strike came just two weeks after protesters in the Upper Egyptian city of Qena blocked the rail traffic for several day ...). And they are simultaneously building up their own independent organisations, some of the instances of the later we already mentioned.
Many examples are at our hand but we cannot produce them for lack of space. But one important victory the workers achieved is that the govt had recently accepted the workers' right to form their own independent trade unions.
The Path Ahead
Before going on to the path ahead let see the path they have already covered.
A. After the onset of the "second phase of reform", as called in India, i.e. more vigorous implementation of Liberalisation-Privatisation-Globalisation in this new century oppression on the working class in particular and toiling people in general has increased manifold. Price rise, unemployment, meagre wages, ?hire-n-fire' or contractualisation of industrial workforce, more increased work load, increased working hours particularly in new industries including tertiary sector ?industries' ... all these were making life intolerable for workers and other toiling people.
B. The objective condition was enough for workers to revolt but they lacked workers' own organisation — the most necessary tool in developing fights. Moreover there was a repressive and thoroughly undemocratic milieu which was totally unfavourable for the development of workers' struggle.
C. The workers solved the problem in their own way. They started fights, in Egypt notably since 2004. They solved the question of organisation temporarily by floating their own Strike Committees. The Mahalla strike was successful and it gave a fillip to workers all over Egypt. Later the workers went ahead to form their own independent organisations, own TU-s, and in 2008 they could get one such union recognised by the government. For the ?Textile Workers League' created in early 2007 — they didn't bother govt recognition at all — recognition by the fighting workers was their strength and asset.
D. The workers did not flock towards established opposition parties including the Muslim Brotherhood or the established ?communists' of the Tagammu, rather they kept a shrewd distance from them. As we have already cited, "In terms of attitudes toward the formal political process, workers and young activists in Egypt ... viewed opposition political parties as untrustworthy and obsolete organizations. Protest leaders have been careful to distance collective action from political parties, strongly denying any alleged links. This distrust is in part due to the perception that parties would attempt to impose their own agenda on the protests instead of advancing the workers' and the activists' demands...."
E. That did not mean at all that the workers shunned politics and/or political demands. Several examples have already been provided in a previous section.
F. That the workers, at least their advanced section, got political consciousness was overtly displayed by their actions. They got this political lesson from summing up their experiences and the cumulative social-political experience of history as much as they understand.
G. Their movements, though they were in the TU level, also as such had some political contents — [well this is a question that has to be developed separately and in a broader spectrum, scribbling some hasty lines will not suffice — fapp] — think of the Mahalla movement of 2006-07 and the placards and slogans: "We will not be ruled by the World Bank! We will not be ruled by colonialism!" Had the movement (against globalisation-liberalisation policies implemented by the govt and the capitalists) not taught them what they were fighting against?
H. The new regime after Mubarak's fall, controlled by the military, which in turn is controlled to a large extent by the US imperialism, from Day 1, displayed their opposition to workers actions including strikes. But workers have defied govt's strike ban boldly. Moreover they could snatch an important demand from this new regime — their right to form own independent organisation!
Now — let us have a look at the path ahead — a bit cursorily, and don't take it as a complete list of tasks.
[1] Installing real democracy — Western imperialist bosses and their Egyptian cronies may at most go ahead to install a parliamentary republic, just like one we have in India now. But that is not democracy, not even a bourgeois democratic republic in the true sense. To say India has attained bourgeois democracy and so the task is to move ahead to socialism displays only self-deception and ignorance about democracy. Let us visit some examples. # India, Pakistan and all their colonial cousins have, for example, section 144 of CrPC which is regularly declared here and there to make workers' or toilers' assembly illegal. But the colonialists themselves, at their UK, do not have this section 144. They designed this act far back in the colonial times. Colonial hangover is still continuing in India and etc and perhaps most glaringly in the legal-juridical field. # We all know about the Wisconsin workers' struggle now. There the workers have taken up a novel task along with several ones — they have started a signature collection drive to call recall referendum for the senators who sided with the anti-worker bill in the state senate. Can you even dream of such a provision in these colonial cousin countries! # Here you get grouped and go to show black flags to the PM or president or etc — you'll be very roughly handled by the security forces and may land into jail, and police will nip the program in the bud. Have you heard of such incidents in say Denmark or Sweden? # There are many black laws in our country, like the notorious AFSPA, ESMA, the act by which Binayak Sen was jailed, etc and barring two years all through the 60+ years of our ?independence' there was one act at least for jailing without trial. Can a Dutch or a Belgian think of all these in their country? Examples galore — so let us not spend much time on this. India, Pakistan, etc are not bourgeois democracies in the real sense — they are, at most, sham democracy. But the tasks of the workers and peasants of India, Pakistan or even Egypt is not to establish a bourgeois democracy — their immediate task is to install real democracy of the toiling people — a peoples' democracy — a system run by the workers and peasants themselves. This is valid for Egypt even though it is more developed than India in many counts in economic sphere.
[2] Agrarian Question of Egypt need to be solved and workers must lead in this process. A sizeable section of the working population there, almost a third, is connected with agriculture. And most of the agricultural holdings are small holdings. In the days of Nasser and some time after that too there were some attempts of half-hearted agrarian reform or land reform. Later the process was reversed and land concentration increased. The agrarian question of Egypt is a big question, too big to deal in a small point. How they will solve it — will there be confiscation (without compensation) of estates of the non-peasant landlords and distribution among the working peasants — will there be nationalisation of land — will they proceed in the line of revamping co-operatives ...and etc are difficult to comment — we only hope Egyptian workers and peasants will solve the problem.
[3] Egypt, like its all Arabic speaking neighbours, has to come out of the clutch of the imperialists and be independent in the true sense.
Let us not try to guess much about the path ahead of the working class of Egypt. So far we have enumerated a few points only. But to do only these few the Egyptian workers and peasants are to complete a real workers-peasants revolution. They have already taken first few steps in organising themselves. We hope they will march forward — they will form a class party of the working class in future — and why not they will teach us some new things, newer ways in this new epoch!
Tunisia
This small country with population much less than Greater Mumbai or Greater Kolkata indeed has a good number of polices — 400,000! The second largest organisation is the old established TU federation UGTT which also once had 400,000 members; but after years of globalisation-liberalisation-privatisation, decrease in workforce along with increase of workload, mounting unemployment and dissention towards the regime with which UGTT was ?close' to say the least, resulted in drop in membership which now stands at 250,000. The UGTT stood by the dictator Ben Ali during his last electoral venture as presidential candidate. In a recent interview Sami Tahri, secretary general of the Union of Secondary Education Workers, an affiliate of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), said, "You should also know that the UGTT, during the past two decades, did not frontally oppose the policies of privatization. It waved the banner of "No to Privatizations", but in fact it went along with the privatizations, [though] trying to preserve as much as possible the interests and rights of workers who were being transferred from the public sector to the private sector." [http://international-liaison-committee-of-workers-and-peoples-eit-ilc.hautetfort.com/archive/2011/04/09/many-voices-are-being-raised-in-tunisia-demanding.html]
In recent years, before the present protest wave that started from 17th December 2010, no strike and other bold actions of the workers were heard than the strike at Gafsa Mining area in 2008. The terror tactic of dictatorial regime, total lack of freedom of struggle, the close relation of the central TU UGTT with the regime etc were strong hurdle for workers' struggle there.
A vivid picture of the repressive regime crushing the fights of workers and unemployed youth can be seen in a report in www.lariposte.com dated Friday, 13 June 2008: "On May 7, Redeyef, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, was surrounded by the police. According to witnesses, several hundred people men, women and children - taking with them only the bare necessities, tried to leave the city with the idea of abandoning it to the security forces. They were dissuaded from doing this by the leaders of the strike committee, and finally they decided to remain and continue the fight. Indeed, a "mass evacuation" of this kind would not have been an effective means of struggle. In any case, this episode illustrates the enormous gulf that has opened up between the people and the authorities. It also reflects the exasperation of a population that faces the behaviour of the "official" trade union leaders, who are notoriously corrupt and completely in the pay of the regime. Hand in hand with the latter, these union "leaders" have tried to isolate and demoralize the strikers and the population in revolt.
"Two days later, on May 9, Taher Saidi, aged 44, was seriously wounded during an intervention of the security forces in the town of Om Larais (35,000 inhabitants). He died on May 19 at the regional hospital of Gafsa.
"The incident that led to the events of May 7 was the death of an unemployed youth who, the day before, had been electrocuted inside a local electricity installation, following a particularly brutal intervention on the part of the security forces against a demonstration of unemployed youths. They were protesting against the results of the less than crystal clear entrance exams to the Compagnie des Phosphates de Gafsa, that were marred by cronyism. The company had in fact agreed to take on unemployed youths from the region in January. A group decided to occupy the electric generator - with the power switched off - that supplies energy to the plant. A police brigade armed with tear gas began to evacuate the generator. The electricity supply was switched on again and several young demonstrators were electrocuted in the process. ...The young man who died was 26 years. His name was Hichem Ben Jeddou El Aleimi. Another, Ahmed Ben Salah Fajraoui, aged 21, was seriously injured."
The Dec 17, 2010 event of self immolation of Mohamed Bou'azizi in front of the Sidi Bouzid City Hall acted as a spark to ignite public anger pent up for decades. Since then, there have been daily demonstrations in the small town, which soon spread to neighbouring cities. But then what happened to the UGTT? "The reports that police had shot peaceful protesters such as 19-year-old Jamli spurred the divided leadership of the UGTT, the workers union, to back the uprising. Thousands rallied against Ben Ali at a Jan. 12 demonstration in front of UGTT headquarters in Sfax, Tunisia's second-largest city. "The union leadership was corrupt and part of the system," Goldstein said. "But the rank and file and leadership in the regions were with the opposition."" [Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2011]
Actually the workers pushed UGTT to go against Ben Ali dictatorship. But top UGTT leadership was always wavering. After Ben Ali fled his Prime Minister Ghannouchi, a brain behind IMF-WB privatisation programme, headed the government. UGTT quickly recognised the legitimacy of that govt [http://allafrica.com/stories/201101280361.html]. UGTT even sent its three representatives to ministerial berths of this govt. But workers again pressurised — all UGTT ministers had to resign. And later, even the PM had to resign.
Now Sami Tahri, secretary general of the Union of Secondary Education Workers said in that same interview we quoted — "There is no doubt that today this question [privatisation] must be debated as a top priority within the UGTT. It is absolutely clear that the revolution requires that the UGTT change fundamentally its economic policies and that it return to its founding program, which clearly affirms the UGTT's socialist commitment. It is also imperative that the UGTT take up the issue of re-nationalization of all privatized enterprises, such as 35% of the postal sector or the railways or certain services or Sonede or Steg. Tunis Air has now been regrouped after being dislocated into several companies."
Without a real working class party worthy of its name, without any conscious leadership from above, the Tunisian workers have marched forward up to this extent, spontaneously, and also ?consciously' — that consciousness that they assimilated from their own experience including that of their past movement.
[We could not incorporate here facts of workers struggle in South Africa and elsewhere due to shortage of space. — Ed FAPP]
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