By Joel Beinin, Middle East Report Online, 29 September 2007
(Joel Beinin, a contributing editor of Middle East Report Online, is director of Middle East studies at the American University in Cairo.)
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For background and profiles of strike leaders Sayyid Habib and Muhammad al-‘Attar, see Joel Beinin and Hossam el-Hamalawy, “Egyptian Textile Workers Confront the New Economic Order,” Middle East Report Online, March 25, 2007. See also Joel Beinin and Hossam el-Hamalawy, “Strikes in Egypt Spread from Center of Gravity,” Middle East Report Online, May 9, 2007. Hossam el-Hamalawy’s blog, 3Arabawy, is a clearinghouse for Mahalla strike and other Egyptian labor news. |
For the second time in less than a year, in the final week of September the 24,000 workers of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra went on strike — and won. As they did the first time, in December 2006, the workers occupied the Nile Delta town’s mammoth textile mill and rebuffed the initial mediation efforts of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Yet this strike was even more militant than December’s. Workers established a security force to protect the factory premises, and threatened to occupy the company’s administrative headquarters as well. Their stand belies the wishful claims of the Egyptian government and many media outlets that the strike wave of 2004-2007 has run its course.
Most importantly, if the promises made by the government are kept, the Mahalla workers have scored a huge victory that will likely have reverberations throughout the Egyptian textile industry, if not beyond. After halting production for less than a week, they won a bonus equivalent to 90 days’ pay, payable immediately. A meeting of the company’s administrative general assembly to be convened soon will increase this to at least 130 days’ pay. In addition, a committee will be formed immediately in the Ministry of Investment to negotiate increases in extra compensation for the hazardous nature of their work and clothing allowances. Incentive pay will be linked to basic pay and subject to a 7 percent annual increase. The executive board of the company will be dissolved and CEO Mahmoud al-Gibali will be sacked. The days of the strike will be considered a paid vacation.