The situation in Egypt today is like water overflowing from a bottle that had been tightly corked off for a long time. A society that has been stagnant for decades is now beginning to move, causing new interactions that give the impression that it’s spilling over.
But the water overflows with no rhyme or rhythm. In fact its movement is mostly haphazard and spontaneous unlike the movement of boiling water which at least seems systematic
But the eruptions taking place in Egyptian society today don’t simply create hot air bubbles. The social protests that have been going on over two years are sketching a new image whose features have not yet crystallized.
The social movement is still in its first phase but what is certain is that Egyptian society is witnessing a transformation that cannot be stopped, and whose social ramifications are spreading from one social sector to the other.
The protests were spearheaded by factory workers but then the professionals complemented the scene. The teachers spoke out against their low wages and hence were able to secure special raises which only applied to them.
It seems that this was the cue for other professionals who began demanding special salary scales in what amounts to a social phenomenon.
Only recently, the doctors, supported by the Doctors’ Syndicate, followed the initiative of the school teachers to demand increases to their low salaries.
What’s new and dangerous is that the doctors have also threatened to start a general strike at all hospitals and public medical facilities. This would constitute a rare occurrence in the history of social protests because a doctors’ strike on that scale would threaten the lives of thousands of people in need of immediate treatment.
No reasonable government would ever take the risk of pushing its doctors to the limit that would lead to such a strike.
But agreeing to such wage demands is not the solution because the crisis has accumulated over decades and now includes all sectors.
When a crisis reaches such levels, it becomes necessary to find a total solution, not simply handle the deteriorating situation with the government’s quick, haphazard fixes.
The doctors aren’t alone in their demands for special salary scales. University professors have also started escalating their financial demands. And just recently engineers finally won a court ruling to end a 10-year-long government control of their syndicate funds.
When demands for special cadres become so widespread, they are no longer “special and it would be wrong to deal with each one independently. And since the core of the crisis is shared by all the various sectors, then treating each case individually would be fatal strategy even if the regime believes it has achieved tactical victories by doing so.
The crisis essentially goes back to a deep distortion in the ailing wages schemes which bear no relation to reality.
The only solution to this inflated crisis is to review the this wage scheme with three essential issues in mind: first, is raising the minimum wage and redefining the maximum salaries – which are currently not subject to any measures and have in some cases reached astronomical heights that neither match work load or experience – in order to secure funding for the minimum wage increase despite the budget deficit.
Second is respecting hitherto ignored criteria such as adoption of work ethics, efficiency, and experience. Without such criteria, people may think they deserve much more than what they get.
And third is tying the revision of salary schemes with an economic and political reform program that will give the dejected workers some hope for a better future.
Dr Waheed Abdel Meguid is an expert at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
