CAIRO: Zein Al-Abdeen Zaki has worked at the Ghazl El-Mahalla textile factory in Gharbiyya Province, north of Cairo for many years and like most laborers in Egypt’s textile sector, his life has never been easy.
The 35-year-old father of four has struggled to support his family on LE 250 a month, but then disaster struck.
“I used to work in the production areas of the factory, but then I lost my fingers in an accident with one of the machines. He says, displaying his left hand. Two of its fingers have been severed just above the knuckle.
“After that the bosses told me I could stay at the factory and work as a garbage collector, but they would only pay me LE 150 a month.
“I am a married man and I have four children – two boys and two girls. The way they treat us, it’s not fair.
In recent weeks, complaints of unfair treatment and corruption have galvanized the workers at Ghazl El-Mahalla, which – with 27,000 employees – is Egypt’s largest public sector factory.
In December the plant’s workforce went on strike to receive bonuses they say were promised to them as public workers according to Prime Ministerial decree 467, which guarantees a yearly bonus equal to two months salary.
Factory managers argued that the decree only applied to employees in ministries and public administration, not to public sector workers. The workers’ union representatives agreed. But the strike prevailed despite this united opposition, and a compromise gave the workers a bonus equal to one and a half months salary.
This week, workers from Ghazl El-Mahalla came to Cairo to present the General Union of Textile workers with a petition demanding the impeachment of their local factory union.
Organizers of this independent workers movement say that their petition, with 13,000 names, exceeds legal requirements which state that such demands be backed by more than 50 percent one of the workforce.
If the General Union does not allow a new election to be held, organizers say their followers will resign en masse and form a union independent of the General Federation of Trade Unions, a government-backed group. Worker leaders say this is an unprecedented challenge to the authority of the General Federation, founded in 1957.
“This is a legitimate demand, Said Mohamed El-Attar, who has been chosen as the spokesperson of the workers movement. “Our union is illegitimate. If our leaders are not impeached we will all leave the union and form our own . independent union. The constitution says we have a right to an independent labor union.
“Our strike was home-grown. He says. “We call it ‘the revolution of the hungry,’ because we all had a part in it. There are no leaders among us, it is just us workers. We are all leaders.
Organizers list a host of grievances, chief among them low wages, corruption and vote-rigging within the union.
“Our salaries are very low, says El-Attar. “The government is creating a huge gap between the classes within the public sector here in Egypt.
“Our average salary in the textile factories is very low compared with other workers. The average salary in steel mills is around LE 4,000 a month. In the aluminum mills in Naga Hamadi the average salary is between LE 3,000 and LE 4,000. But for textile workers our average salary is between LE 150 and LE 250.
Health care is also a major concern for the workers at Ghazl El-Mahalla. They charge that unsanitary working conditions contribute to health problems that their low salaries keep them too poor to adequately treat.
“We all have bad respiratory problems and head aches from breathing dirty, dusty air all day. This is becoming a very big health problem for us, says El Attar.
“The salary we get is not enough to even cover daily food costs, let alone medicine. Management will tell you that there is a hospital at the factory that treats workers. True, the hospital is there, but it doesn’t even provide us with basic health services.
A delegation of 200 workers presented their demands to the leaders of the General Union of Textile Workers in a tense Monday meeting at syndicate headquarters in Shubra.
Directly addressing members of the board, El Attar described what the workers see as the local union’s betrayal.
“We carried out a very civilized strike, similar to any democratic struggle happening anywhere in the world. He told the union leaders. “We gave our management 3 days notice before the strike began and we did not accept any salary for those three days as a form of protest. We agreed to begin our sit-in on Thursday. It was a successful sit-in, but we never saw you there. You were sitting with management in their offices, and we didn’t see you once. In fact, we didn’t see a single person from our supposedly elected union for 3 days.
“We workers put our faith in you and you tried to sell us out by siding with our enemies. He said, to cheers from the crowd. “Now we are taking back that trust.
Leaders of the General Union reacted with visible disbelief to the charges, as well as to the spectacle of being heckled by so many of their own members. They agreed to consider the workers’ demands and provide an official response by Feb. 15.
“I can’t just impeach someone from their job, exclaimed Said Ghory, the Chairman of the General Union, to a cacophony of heckling from the audience. “Besides, how are you going to verify 13,000 signatures? he continued. “Are you going to sit down with 13,000 people to verify their signatures? I will not go out and ask all these workers to verify their names, but we have our own ways of finding out who these people are.
Ghory vigorously contested the workers’ account of the union’s role in the December strike and insisted the general union was the only body defending workers’ rights.
As the crowd booed him, he held steadfast: “We stood by your rights more than anyone else because this is our duty!
But the workers are refusing to back down and are likely to raise their demands.
Outside the meeting, Ghazl El-Mahalla employee Mohamed Metwali Hegazi says the workers are united in seeking a change of the textile factory’s management and the representatives present at the workers syndicate.
“We have no say in the way things are run now, he told The Daily Star Egypt.
“Everyone says we live in an age of democracy and citizenship. Well we have rights [and] Egyptian citizens must have a way to express their opinions.
