CAIRO: Next week, the Industrial and Labor committee at the People s Assembly will discuss the workers strikes taking place in many factories allover the country, said Haidar El Boghdady, an MP belonging to the National Democratic Party.
Representatives from both the private and the public sectors and the higher council for wages will also attend the sessions to discuss the reasons and consequences of those events, El Boghdady told The Daily Star Egypt.
The most recent strikes took place in Daqahleya, Alexandria, and Suez, where workers demanded a better economic and social climate as well as higher wages.
According to Al- Masry Al-Youm newspaper, the strikes of Mansoura- Spain factory for readymade garments reached their climax when workers held the factory s chairman for some hours, refusing to allow him to leave his office.
In Suez, workers at Al-Agowaa factory protested for four consecutive days and threatened to go on hunger strike if their conditions were not met.
Workers in Bolifar Textiles company in Alexandria threatened to file a lawsuit against their company s shareholders if they refused to grant their demands.
Magdy Ahmed Hussein, head of the Islamist Labor Party, told The Daily Star Egypt, We are facing a very important change in our political life, and one of its main features is the participation of the workers in protests.
According to Hussein, the workers strikes can be interpreted in two basic ways: first that the economic crisis has reached a severe unbearable peak; and second that the fear barrier between the government and the workers has collapsed.
Samir Radwan, managing director of the Economic Research Forum, told The Daily Star Egypt that at the surface the strikes may appear as negative, but he confirmed that Egypt’s economy is actually developing.
“The gross domestic product has reached seven percent and foreign investments are LE 6.2 billion and are expected to go up to LE 8 billion.
Radwan said that economic reform is always fraught with problems resulting from decreased wages due to rising inflation rates.
In Egypt the inflation rate increased from four to 11 percent.
However, Radwan believes that there should be an alternative mechanism to prevent workers from resorting to strikes to solve disputes.
He stressed that no mechanism to settle disputes exists in the country, whose role should be to solve the workers problems.
In Egypt, the workers and the administration go in opposite directions, Radwan said.
What is happening with the workers is an accumulation of many years where industrial relations have been neglected, Radwan said.
Hussein, however, believes that the strikes are harmless.
Strikes exist in every democratic society, only their excess can lead to problems, he added.
Hussein also blamed the absence of real and active labor syndicates that should be in charge of workers problems.
The current syndicates, he says, are made up of government employees who are unable to speak for the workers.
