Egypt

During October workers' struggles continued in Egypt. This year, according to one source, there have been 580 ‘industrial actions' in the nine months to the end of September. This compares to 222 strikes recorded in the whole of 2006. The strikes continue to be as inspiring as during last December's strike wave...

Last December there was a wave of strikes and other protests across Egypt (see WR 302, 304) which resulted in the government conceding annual bonuses equivalent to 45 days wages. However, this did not put a lid on workers' struggles, which have continued ever since.

In WR 302 we reported on the wave of strikes which swept numerous sectors in Egypt at the beginning of the year: in cement and poultry plants, in mines, on the buses and on the railways, in the sanitation sector, and above all in the textile industry, workers have been out on a series of illegal strikes against rapidly declining real wages and cuts in benefits. The militant, spontaneous character of these struggles can be glimpsed in this description of how, in December last year, the struggle broke out at the big Mahalla al-Kubra’s Misr Spinning and Weaving complex north of Cairo, which was the epicentre of the movement.