WATANI International
2 October 2011
Strikes are not new to Egypt.
Since 2004, workers in the industrial sector in several instances went on strike or staged walk-outs to demand, in most cases, better pay and service packages. Perhaps the most famous were the string of strikes waged by the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra workers, which started in 2006 and never ended till the 25 January Revolution at the beginning of this year. The workers occupied the Nile Delta town’s mammoth textile mill and rebuffed the initial mediation efforts of Egypt’s then ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).
In 2006 alone, the liberal Cairo daily al-Masry al-Youm estimated that no fewer than 222 sit-in strikes, work stoppages, hunger strikes and demonstrations had occurred. And the trend continued unstopped ever since.
This time it’s different
Last week saw a new wave of strikes hit Egypt. But this time it was different. Events took a serious turn when doctors, teachers, and workers in the public transportation sector joined in. The demands centred on higher pay and financial incentives, as well as setting ‘fair’ minimum and maximum wages.
The Public Transportation Authority (PTA) workers and drivers went on partial strike which was later expanded to a full strike in Cairo, demanding better pay and working conditions, a raise in reward incentive, meal allowances, and modern vehicles. When they failed to reach an agreement with the PTA, the employees staged a walk-out that stretched from Tahrir Square to the Cabinet, some 700 metres away.
Thousands of teachers engaged in a nationwide strike that started with the first day of the school year 2011 – 2012. They held a walk-out in front of the Cabinet, demanding the dismissal of Education Minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin Moussa for “disregarding their demands”, a minimum wage of EGP3000 (USD500) per month—the minimum wage in Egypt, yet to be decreed, is proposed at EGP660 a month—and a 200 per cent increase in reward incentive. They blocked the traffic through barricading a main road and two side streets. For his part, Mr Moussa said he had never disregarded the teachers’ demands “I have been continuously pressuring the Finance Minister and the Premier for that.”
As though to complete the picture of crippled basic services, medical doctors waged a partial strike which was later stepped up to a general strike when their demands—mainly for better pay—were not met.
A legally-sanctioned right
Also throughout the past fortnight, workers at Ain al-Sukhna Port near Suez waged a strike, demanding generous financial benefits. The losses incurred amounted to some EGP200 million, which prompted the port administration to close down the port and threaten to recruit labour from outside Egypt. The workers went back to work, but the administrator, the Dubai Ports World, said it would conduct no negotiations with the workers before they had worked regularly for two weeks to prove their goodwill.
Economic experts fear the negative impact of these strikes on the Egyptian economy, especially where foreign—and local, for that matter—investment is concerned.
“Strikes are a legally-sanctioned right, as long as they do not implicate public interest,” the lawyer Youssef Ahmed Youssef told Watani. “The PTA workers, for instance, are entitled to wage a partial strike or a walk-out on their days off in order to publicise their legitimate demands. But this should not develop into a full strike that brings public transportation to a halt.” Branding the extended strike as “irresponsible”, Mr Youssef explained that the administrative law penalises employees for over 15 days of work stoppage with penalties that may go up to dismissal from their work and fines for the financial losses incurred by the authority for which they work.
He confirmed that the 2003 work law sanctions, albeit with restrictions, the right to strike or call for a strike. A strike or the call for a strike should be made through syndicates or unions, and the employer should be notified of the scheduled event, the reasons behind it, and its planned duration, 10 days earlier. In exchange, Mr Youssef said, the law grants the employer in case of worker strikes the right to partially or fully close down the facility, even if this impacts his labour force in any way.
Yet the law bans strikes in vital public facilities such as schools, hospitals, pharmacies, bakeries, communications, public transportation and that of goods, water, gas, electricity, sanitary drainage and civil defence, as well as ports and airports.
Backfire
“What is happening is a calamity on an already suffering nation,” the economic expert Mukhtar al-Sherif said to Watani. “In case of Ain al-Sukhna port workers, even though the port administration initially responded to the workers demands, they came up with more. They appeared not to realise the dire consequences of their ever-increasing demands on foreign investments in Egypt,” he added, stressing that individuals look for their own benefit without considering the nation’s current status. But ultimately, loss of foreign investment means loss of jobs. And more money in the hands of the public while production is at a standstill means higher prices and spiralling inflation. The striking workers should be made aware that any unreasonable demands stand to backfire against them.
Head of the Arab Scientific Society Saad Eddin Ashmawi says that the Sukhna port strike is bound to send a negative message to foreign investors; worker strikes are not the best incentive to invest.
Recent statistics on the Egyptian economy have shown a sharp downfall in the size of both foreign and local investment over the past months. This, according to the economic expert Rashad Abdou, has triggered a severe slowdown in economic growth and prompted the Central Bank to pull USD11 billion out of Egypt’s cash reserve to cater for the country’s basic needs and attempt to halt the loss in value of the Egyptian Pound.
“Should foreign investors choose to withdraw from the Egyptian market,” Dr Abdou told Watani, “our economy will lose the influx of foreign currency, which will in turn increase the demand for it and prompt a further devaluation of the Pound. This will inevitably lead to a hike in prices of commodities, and will have a negative impact on the economy, especially considering the already high unemployment rate.”
National security issue
“The strikers’ problems are the outcome of years of piled-up problems, and will not be solved in the blink of an eye,” managing editor of the Cairo daily al-Youm al-Sabei, Akram al-Qassass, wrote. “It will take years to solve such problems; and this will definitely not happen during the transitional period Egypt is now going through.” The strikes threaten Egypt’s national security, he wrote, and should be dealt with on this basis.
On the street, the Egyptian public is livid. “We cannot ride to our work, our children cannot go to school, and it would be the worst luck in the world if you fall sick,” a young working mother told Watani. “If doctors, teachers, or bus drivers are suffering, well, so are we all. They should find ways other than strikes to solve their problems.”
On the Internet, reader comments echoed the public wrath at the strikes. On news sites as well as on Facebook and Twitter the general fury was so strong as to amount to more than some 95 per cent of the comments.
Many ask how would the pay increases for the doctors and bus drivers be financed? It is an open secret that Egypt’s economy is stretched thin. And it is an open secret that doctors have for years accepted the low government pay for the benefit they garner out of being officially employed by a public hospital, a benefit which places them in a position to run lucrative private practices.
“It would be disastrous should the government comply to the demands of the strikers,” says Nasser Aly, a curriculum expert with the National Centre for Education Research. “What would then keep all other sectors of Egyptians from striking to make preposterous demands?”
Yumna al-Hamaqi, Economics professor at Ain Shams University, says that strikes sap the State’s economy, and the increasing pay demand for pay rises may mean bankruptcy for Egypt. “It would be impossible to raise taxes at this point,” she says. “We cannot sustain strikes. I see that pay should be linked to productivity.”
Blackmail
The teachers’ strike especially drew some bitter criticism, with most comments branding it as “unjustified”, since public school teachers are notorious for skipping teaching in class in order to force their pupils into taking private lessons. One “father of a student”, wrote that “the teachers, those vampires who seep the blood of Egyptian families through the scourge of the private lessons they impose on their pupils, have the cheek to demand better pay, then stop working if they don’t get it.”
Another “parent” warned teachers that they had lost their credit with the Egyptian people; “they are blackmailing us with this strike,” he said.
Mohamed Imam, a teacher, defended himself and others of his profession when he wrote: “I am a teacher with a wife and two children. I do not give private lessons, so have to work at a second job to make ends meet. If we want to put an end to private lessons, we ought to pay a teacher what would afford a dignified life.” But “Will this make teachers indeed give up private lessons?” other comments leered. “No pay increase can ever do that.”
In pain, however, Aida Abu-Gharib, professor of curricula and teaching methods at the National Centre for Educational and Developmental Researches, poses a question disregarded by many. “How about our children?” she says. “Doesn’t anyone worry about how they feel? They wear their school uniform and run to school, all excited about the first day in a new school year, only to be put down by finding no teacher willing to teach them. How will they deal with the frustration and the feeling of being let down by their teachers and schools? Will the image of the teacher as one of the child’s first significant role models ever be rectified?”