CAIRO: Hundreds of workers from the Tanta Flax and Oil Company demonstrated Monday morning in protest to the General Union of Textile Workers’ calls to end their strike, now in its third month.
The workers blocked the roads to and from the factory before anti-riot police trucks were called into the scene.
“They are outnumbering us and they are trying to push us back inside the factory, Safwat Michel, a strike leader told Daily News Egypt. “They are now threatening to beat us back to the factory.
The threats have done little to the spirit of the workers, who are coming out in droves. “Now we are about 750 workers and we are waiting for the third shift to join so we will be 900, he added.
Monday’s action comes after a protest organized by the workers Sunday morning was suspended due to security pressures, a source inside the company told Daily News Egypt.
The protest was supposed to take place in front of the Ministry of Manpower and Migration in Cairo.
“We received information that security forces were setting up ambushes and checkpoints on the road in order to stop us, Michel told Daily News Egypt.
He explained that security forces had their buses’ license plates, which would make it easy for them to track them. The workers decided against going for the Cairo protest.
The strike entered its third month, with workers accusing the administration of deliberately driving the factory to a loss.
Saudi investor Abdullah Al-Kaeky bought the company in 2005 from the Egyptian government for a much lower price than the market value, the workers argue.
The workers are demanding a salary increase to correspond with the average minimum wage across the country. They claim they did not receive a promised raise – as per their contract – after Al-Kaeky took over in July 2008.
Their demands also include an increase in meal allowances and the return of nine fired workers, two of whom are union members and were arguably illegally fired.
Meanwhile, security forces in and around the Tanta factory have reportedly kept the media out of the premises, preventing them from covering the events unfolding there.
Last week workers protested outside the factory, demanding that the media be allowed to cover the strike, after a local television channel and a journalist from the opposition daily Al-Dostour newspaper were banned from entering the factory grounds.
“We took to the street outside the factory’s gates insisting on the return of the journalists, Hisham Al-Okal, a worker and a former union member told Daily News Egypt. “Security forces called in nine anti-riot trucks to the scene.
However, no clashes erupted between the workers and security forces.
Although the journalists were not allowed to return on the same day, the factory’s gates are now open to both the media and visitors, Al-Okal said.
Workers argue that Al-Kaeky refuses to hold negotiations with the workers and does not hold the factory’s best interest at heart, but rather “cares about the land’s value.
“The land is what foreign investors really care about, argued Mohamed Radi, worker at Nile Cotton Ginning Company in Minya.
“Our factory stands on 84 acres of land facing the Nile and comes with another seven factories, all of which was sold in 1997 for LE 33 million, a small number for the real value of the property, Radi said Saturday at a conference held in support of the striking workers from different companies nationwide.
The conference took place at Al-Hilaly Organization for Freedom of Speech in downtown Cairo.
The need for “different and more efficient protesting methods was a prominent topic at the conference. Workers argued that foreign investors are benefiting from the strikes and have no intention of negotiating with workers, so there is a need for a different approach to be put in play.
“Danger lies in the fact that each of us is working alone, while we should be united and working together, Wael Habeeb, a worker at the Mahalla Weaving Company said Saturday. “Our enemy is the same, he added.
Other workers agreed with the shared sentiments, voicing their concerns over their own factories’ “abuse.
“We are in a unique position in the world, said Nabih Abdel Ghani, a member of the Tagammu Party. “Across the globe, those who strike are responded to, but in Egypt, the investor doesn’t want production and as workers we need to think about alternative striking methods.
Abdel Ghani argued that “the universal logic of striking does not work here.
