MANSOURA: Since April 21, the Mansoura Spanish Garment Factory in the Nile delta has been occupied by almost 300 mainly female workers, who are staging a sit-in on the plant’s shop floor after a dispute with management over missed pay and the controversial sale of the company.
Workers say they are too poorly paid to meet many of their basic needs, a problem made worse by the failure of the company to pay them their last 17 bonuses since 1999. Additionally, they are concerned that the factory may close after a recent announcement that it was sold through a process they condemn as lacking transparency.
The protestors, many of whom recently spoke with foreign visitors while wearing dark niqabs, say they remain committed to the factory occupation despite a deal offered by Aisha Abdel Hady, the Minister of Manpower and Labor, on Tuesday May 8. According to sources on the factory union committee, which negotiated the offer, Abdel Hady agreed to pay the workers one month salary out of the Ministry budget in exchange for an immediate end to the protest.
The local union committee, which is supposed to represent the employees of Mansoura Spanish, accepted the deal without consulting them. Upon learning the details of the offer, workers rejected it. Initial media reports claimed that 70 percent of the protestors had accepted the offer and ended the sit-in, but those reports were not consistent with the scene on the shop floor.
“The union is not there for us, said Gamal Ramadan, a middle aged production worker who has been employed by Mansoura Spanish for 19 years. “The union is not effective. Ideally it should work for both the employer and the workers, but in reality it doesn’t take our side in anything. We don’t know anyone on the local committee who is on our side, they all side with the management.
“The vice president of the local factory committee was just here a few minutes ago to negotiate with us, to convince us to accept the deal, Ramadan added. “But he left the moment he heard there were journalists around. The local union doesn’t want any confrontation.
For years, workers complain that wages in Egypt’s textile sector have been stagnant. At the Mansoura plant, many of the protesting workers said that they were not even paid enough to meet their basic needs and provide for their families.
“I just got married and my father still pays everything for me, said Mohamed Sayyed Mahmoud, 24, who works at the plant with his younger brother Ahmed. “Electricity, water, food – he pays for everything. I only make LE 150 a month and I just don’t have the money to support myself. Without my father’s support I wouldn’t be able to survive.
Mansoura Spanish was founded in 1985 by a consortium of Spanish investors, who sold it shortly thereafter to the Cairo-based United Exchange Bank. According to Mohsen El Shaer, a member of the local factory union committee, on April 19 workers were told by the company CEO, Magdy El Magharby, that the bank was selling the firm. El Magharby would not tell the workers who the new management would be and could give them no indication of their future job security.
After learning about the sale, workers began to fear the worst. In the months leading up to the announcement, rumors swirled around the shop floor that the plant would be closed. Over the last year the company has been racked with massive lay-offs, and the work force has shrunk from almost 1,200 to just 284.
Now, mostly disused sewing machines line the inside of the plant in long rows. Only a few women continue their work on the ever-dwindling number of orders, sewing brightly colored t-shirts for sale in the local market. They say that in the last several months leading up to the sale, the management stopped taking new commissions. Of the 11 production lines that were once active, only two are now in use.
All of these signs, they fear, point to the company’s shut down.
“We want the money we are owed, we want to keep the factory open so we can keep making a living, said one woman, who asked not to be named. “We want to know the truth about what is going on with the sale. We are not asking for much, but we want our rights.
“We don’t want the factory to close, said another woman. “There are a lot of people here who depend on it. It’s their work, it’s how they live. We just want to be well-paid and have a good job, that’s the most important thing.
“The management won’t tell us anything about the sale, she added. “They come in here and look around and take pictures of the inside, but then they don’t tell us what is going on.
The workers have occupied the factory floor for the last 20 days, and on average 200 people sleep there each night on sheets of cardboard arranged on the floor in-between the sewing machines. Many women have brought their children, some as young as four months old, inside the plant to spend the night with them. They say they will not go home until the factory management meets their demands.
“I only make LE 136 a month. That’s been my salary for six years and I have never gotten a raise, said one woman, handing her pay stub to a foreign visitor. “I have two children, and now the exam weeks are coming up in school and there are all these problems with the factory too. If the factory closes, how am I supposed to support my family? How are we supposed to live?
