Celebration in Cairo to honor prominent women of the strike movement

(...) the elected strike committee of the tax collectors effectively turned itself into an independent trade union. The same has happened at Misr Spinning and Weaving in Mahalla al-Kubra in the Nile Delta. The Mahalla textile workers are among the best organized and most politically conscious. In November 2007 they initiated regular meetings with representatives of other public- and private-sector firms seeking to raise consciousness and prepare the organizational infrastructure to establish a trade union independent of the General Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions, which is effectively an arm of the state.

The oppositional middle-class intelligentsia, which had difficulty relating to the strike movement until late 2007, has begun to demonstrate more consistent solidarity with the working class and its demands. Broad popular discontent over inflation and massive anger over the shortage of subsidized bread, the main source of calories for the poor, have become more visible in recent months and provided the context for making this still tenuous cross-class connection. Some of the mobilizations around these issues have been closely linked to the strike movement.

On February 17, over 10,000 Misr Spinning and Weaving workers, many of them waving loaves of bread, with support from their families and local merchants, demonstrated against soaring price increases and bread shortages. The latter have precipitated several violent disturbances, which left up to seven people dead and attracted international media attention. The restive lines outside bakeries in Cairo’s poorer neighborhoods are the most poignant indicator of how unequally the fruits of Egypt’s record economic growth are distributed.

But it is not just the price of bread that is stretching Egyptians’ meager budgets to the breaking point. An investigative report by al-Misri al-Yawm concluded that the price of basic foodstuffs rose at rates of at least 33 percent (for meat), and as much as 146 percent (for chicken), from 2005 to 2008. The official annual rate of inflation for January 2008 was over 11 percent and over 12 percent for February. The Mahalla workers have popularized the demand for a national minimum wage of 1,200 Egyptian pounds a month to cope with this inflation. This move has embarrassed the trade union federation into advocating increasing the minimum wage from 115 Egyptian pounds a month, which has been the rate since 1984, to 800 Egyptian pounds a month. A family of four would live just below the poverty line of $2 a day on 1,200 pounds a month.

The rising cost of living led university professors to stage a one-day strike in March. Doctors have also threatened to strike, and dentists have expressed dissatisfaction with their wages. The participation of these middle-class professionals in protests has lent broader legitimacy to the workers’ movement and further discredited the regime of President Husni Mubarak, which has bestirred itself of late to contain the discontent over shortages of staples, holding out the prospect of increased subsidies. The political prospects of the strike movement remain uncertain, however.

Gathering Dissent

The Muslim Brothers, the largest opposition force in Egypt, have played little role in the workers’ movement. At IBSF there is evidence that the Brothers (or perhaps other Islamists) have sown discord among the workers by claiming that Orascom, which is owned by the Christian Sawiris clan, is seeking to dispossess Muslim workers. In fact, there are both Muslim and Christian workers at the firm. The group of workers who related their stories insisted vociferously and repeatedly that they totally reject making any distinction between Muslims and Christians and that while they had brought their plight to the attention of one of their two parliamentary representatives who belongs to the ruling National Democratic Party, they did not approach the representative who is a Muslim Brother, fearing that he would promote a sectarian approach to their problem.

Left intellectuals seem to be finding ways to support the workers’ movement. The Sixth Cairo Conference and Social Forum, an annual event organized by a coalition of Trotskyists, Nasserists and Muslim Brothers convened from March 27-30. In 2008, as in 2007, workers addressed audiences comprised largely of Muslim Brothers and secular intellectuals, including foreigners. Some Egyptian leftists and progressives shy away from this event. They do not want to be associated with the Muslim Brothers. Others reject its rather simple-minded notion of “resistance” against Zionism and imperialism, one that embraces any and all forms of armed struggle and has a high tolerance for anti-Semitism. Still others regard the event as irrevocably tainted, since the first conference in December 2002 is said to have been funded by Saddam Hussein to rally opposition to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

At the same time (perhaps indicating either a certain lack of coordination or sectarian competition), on March 28 the New Woman Foundation organized a celebration in Cairo to honor women who have been prominent in the strike movement. Women strike leaders from the tax collectors’ movement, Misr Spinning and Weaving, and the Hinawi Tobacco Company in Damanhour were acknowledged, along with Na‘ma ‘Abduh, a resident of Wadi ‘Amar near Alexandria, who had organized her neighborhood to protest pollution from the cement dust from the Portland Cement Company, which was causing asthma and other illnesses.

After the festivities the women sat down with a number of their male colleagues and participated in a strategy session to discuss the call for a general strike on April 6, initiated by the Mahalla textile workers. The strike will occur two days before local elections, which will finally take place after a two-year delay to allow time for a sweeping crackdown on the Muslim Brothers. The local elections have been rigged in advance through the elimination of most candidates known to oppose the National Democratic Party and the arrest of 800 Muslim Brothers, many of whom were planning to run in the elections. (...)"

Joel Beinin, April 5, 2008

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