CAIRO: A delegation of 100 factory workers from the delta town of Mahalla was barred from holding a demonstration at the Downtown Cairo headquarters of the General Federation of Trade Unions on Sunday to demand the removal of their local union officials.
The workers charge their union leaders with corruption, and say they have been co-opted by the management of their state-owned factory.
But the delegation was prevented from leaving Mahalla by a phalanx of state security personnel, who stopped them at several points along the way.
According to witnesses, state security officers first stopped the group from leaving town by bus by confiscating the the driver’s license of their hired bus driver. When the workers then tried to reach Cairo by train, they were surrounded inside the station and kept from boarding.
“At the station, state security surrounded us and would not let us board. The police were everywhere, and they threatened to arrest all of us, said Mohamed El Attar, a spokesperson for the Mahalla workers
In defiance of this crackdown, workers in Mahalla say they may launch a new strike early this week.
The Ghazl El-Mahalla factory became iconic within the labor movement after a successful December strike brought 27,000 workers together to demand their annual bonuses, and it is unclear what effect a new strike there would have on workers elsewhere in the country.
Workers in nearby Shebeen El Kom, who staged a strike of their own this winter, have already declared that they are “in solidarity with the Mahalla workers, although they have stopped short of declaring a new strike.
The Mahalla workers first demanded the removal of their local union representatives in January, say organizers, and today’s protest was meant to pressure the General Federation into responding to that demand.
If the local representatives are not impeached, the workers threaten to resign from the General Federation en masse and form an independent union, which would be the country’s first.
“The workers are saying now that under no conditions will they accept the continuation of those labor union officials, Kamal Abbas, the General Secretary of the CTUWS, told The Daily Star Egypt in February.
“Just the idea of presenting your resignation from the General Federation is unprecedented. It never happens. This is going to have a ripple effect in the same way that the Ghazl El-Mahalla strike sent a message to the entire working class of Egypt.
According to the government, the message that the CTUWS sends is one of unrest and instability that threatens the social peace of the country. The state says the group “causes unrest and “puts stability at risk, and in the last month has shut two of its branch offices.
Labor organizers and a coalition of human rights advocates organized a separate demonstration on Sunday in front of the Ministry of Social Affairs, to protest the most recent CTUWS closure, which also took place in Mahalla.
Activists say the shutdowns are not about keeping the peace, but are part of a larger crackdown on political opposition, and accuse the regime of a campaign of harassment and intimidation.
Their protest attracted a crowd of about 40, as well as a heavy security presence. Protestors expressed their outrage at the shut-down and demanded to speak to a representative from the ministry, to whom they planned to deliver a letter of protest.
According to witnesses in Mahalla, officials from the Ministry of Social Affairs, accompanied by a detail of state security police, shut down the center’s Mahalla office on Wednesday at 8 pm, sealing its door with red wax.
The Mahalla shut-down came after a week-long campaign of harassment, said the CTUWS in a statement, and comes only two weeks after the government closed the center’s office in the Upper Egyptian city of Nagaa Hamadi, in Qena Province.
The CTUWS has called the shut-downs “an unjustifiable and unexplainable government escalation.
In a statement, the group says it does not sow unrest, but is committed to “defend the right to go on strike as one of the human rights guaranteed by international conventions ratified by the government of Egypt and maintained by the Egyptian constitution.
Workers say they think the regime is cracking down because it is afraid of them organizing independently of the General Federation, which has traditionally helped the regime pacify workers and reign in potential labor militancy.
“The regime knows there is a general frustration in the country, said Abbas. “It’s like having a pimple somewhere on your body and you know if you just touch it, it is going to explode. We’re talking about strikes with thousands of people.
“The regime is also very scared because whatever the workers are doing in one sector or in one place could just spread to the whole country because the workers are linked organically, he said. “Today you impeach your factory union committee, maybe tomorrow you will impeach the People’s Assembly, and then maybe the next day you will try to impeach the President. Once this starts, who knows where it will lead?
