By W.G. Dunlop /AFP
AL-MAHALLAH AL-KOBRA: With the old regime out of the way after mass protests in which they played a role, strikers at a giant factory in Egypt are now pushing for reforms closer to home and pay rises.
A strike organizer said on Friday that workers have held talks on reforms with the military, which has ruled Egypt since the Feb. 11 ouster of president Hosni Mubarak.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces earlier this week called on Egyptian workers to halt strikes, warning that the economic impact of labor protests could be “disastrous” for the country at large.
But activist workers from the Misr Spinning and Weaving factory in Al-Mahallah Al-Kobra, north of Cairo, went on strike anyway.
The plant in the Nile Delta has a long history of activism, including a call for an ultimately failed strike on April 6, 2008 that inspired the pro-democracy April 6 movement that has continued to push for change.
“We are in a revolution, and the revolution, as they say, cleaned out the corrupt leaders,” said Faisal Naousha, a stocky, mustachioed 43-year-old who is an organizer of the strike which he said has shut down the factory.
“The strike is ongoing … The military leadership sat with us yesterday and we gave them a list of demands,” Naousha said on Friday. “If we get a paper today from the armed forces, we will work tomorrow.”
The strikers want company executive Fouad Abdel Alim Hassan to resign “because of corruption, and losses, and dictatorship,” said Naousha.
An increase in wages is another key demand. “The salaries of the workers of Mahallah are … nothing,” said Ibrahim, a 35-year-old who has worked at the factory for 14 years.
Naousha said workers make between LE 400 and LE 1,000 ($68 and $170) per month, but want salaries to be raised to between LE 1,200 and LE 2,500 ($204 and $425).
Several hundred workers on Thursday occupied the main square in Misr Spinning and Weaving’s giant, high-walled, fortress-like compound in Al-Mahallah Al-Kobra, a city of mostly grim, low-rise buildings.
Strikers said some of them spent the night in the square. A list of workers’ demands and posters calling for managers to quit have been attached to a wrought-iron fence around the square.
The roughly 24,000 employees at the factory walked out on Feb. 10 in support of demonstrations against Mubarak, who was ousted the next day after more than two weeks of mass protests across Egypt.
On Feb. 13, Naousha announced the walkout at the factory where he has worked for 19 years was suspended. “Mubarak’s resignation was one of our main demands. Now that it has happened, we will re-focus on our economic demands.”
But on Wednesday, the strike kicked off again with the factory’s management and pay increases in the workers’ sights.
Some employees have been at the factory for decades, such as Ibrahim Tantawi, who is 59 but looks much older. He and co-worker 60-year-old Ahmed Abu Karim have both worked there for 43 years, they said.
Apart from striking in solidarity with the anti-Mubarak protesters, Misr Spinning and Weaving workers said they were also directly involved.
Workers would “work, then protest, work, then protest,” said Tantawi, who was burning through and freely distributing locally-produced Cleopatra cigarettes.
One group of strikers sitting at a street side cafe near the factory said they had all been involved in the anti-Mubarak protests.
“There were people from here in Tahrir Square,” the epicenter of anti-government demonstrations in central Cairo, in addition to protests in Al-Mahallah Al-Kobra, said Magdi Sabri, 39, who has been a Misr Spinning employee for 15 years.
The army has several tanks deployed in Al-Mahallah Al-Kobra, including one at the gate of the factory compound, but Naousha said there have been no problems with the military or the police during the latest strike.
Misr Spinning and Weaving is the largest plant in the Egyptian textile industry, which employs 48 percent of the country’s total labor force, according to the Centre for Trade Union and Workers Services.
