CAIRO: Workers from subsidiary companies of the Suez Canal Authority have won concessions, two weeks after they began a sit-in which ended last week.
Employees of the Canal Company for Ports and Large Projects began a sit-in outside company headquarters in Ismailia on Sept. 2, while their colleagues from the Port Said Rope Workers Company – another subsidiary company of the Suez Canal Authority – began their sit-in the following Sunday.
Workers were calling for wage parity with their counterparts in the Suez Canal Authority who, they say, earn three or four times as much as they do for doing the same work.
The sit-in in Ismailia ended in the early hours of Sept. 10.
Ashraf Abbas, a member of the Egyptian Workers and Trade Union Watch’s Ismailia branch told Daily News Egypt that workers were both threatened by state security officers, and persuaded to end the sit-in with offers of increases in certain allowances.
On Saturday, workers won further concessions.
“We have been promised a 50 percent increase in our basic pay plus a one-off payment equivalent to our basic salaries for Ramadan, Mohamed Anwar, head of the company’s trade union committee told Daily News Egypt.
“This is in addition to the increase in the food allowance to LE 52 per month which we were promised last week, Anwar continued.
Anwar told Daily News Egypt that workers are satisfied with these results, although management has not responded to workers’ principal demand of consolidating the seven subsidiary companies into the Suez Canal Authority.
