Labor | Holidays without Wages: ECESR Press Conference Coverage

The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) organized a press conference on Monday, 21 September 2015 under the title “Holidays without Wages: Workers against Expulsion”. The conference discussed the working conditions of workers in various companies and workplaces who haven’t been paid for months or arbitrarily discharged.

The conference showcased workers from the Minya al-Qamh branch of Egypt-Iran Company, Suez’s Rock Ceramic, and Cairo’s Palestine Hospital. Unionist Saud Omar and ECESR’s legal unit head Alaa Abd-el-Tawab also attended.

Saud Omar

Saud Omar started by pinpointing the common traits between companies hosted in the conference, which is the direct threat to the right to work and the ensuing wages and training opportunities. He gave Egypt-Iran Company as an example for the destruction of the weaving industry in Egypt. The company collects social insurance subscriptions from works and then refrains from paying the social insurance authority, which means the worker is robbed twice.

He then talked about the lack of state supervision regarding the relationships between investors and workers. The state issued decrees granting all sorts of incentives to investors, offering state land with utilities and tax breaks to investors after which companies decide to liquidate and abandon the workers.

Egypt-Iran Company is currently 300 million pounds in debt, and sales went down to 100 million. The company is indebted to the tax authority, social insurance, and the electricity company. Workers are getting paid their basic salary from the company’s emergency fund.

Saud Omar talked about similar issues in Suez’s Integrated Oil Industries (IOI) where the investor applied twice for closure.

Egypt-Iran Company

Fawzy Abd-el-Maqsod continued talking about the problems the workers of Egypt-Iran Company in Minya al-Qamh are facing. The workers have been on strike for a month because they did not receive August salaries and other allowances for the past 22 months.

The workers of the Minya al-Qamh factory are also receiving their salaries from the temporary fund. The workers are on strike after resorting to all officials including the president, the minister of investment, the minister of planning and the governor of Sharqiya.

Rock Ceramic

Tamer Farag, a worker in Suez’s Rock Ceramic, summarized the issue in late wages, a recurring problem since 2010. Workers were deprived of establishing a union after firing the first union in 2013 and then the second union a day after elections.

Natural Gas debts were the reason the owner requested partial closure, who also wants to cut employment by half. The directorate of manpower is yet to approve the decision.

To avoid problems, the owner gave the factory workers paid leave from 27 July to 10 August. The leave was extended to September 10, and then to the end of October. The workers are afraid of gradual closure. It is worth mentioning that the factory started out with 3 production lines and 1900 workers, and now it has 6 production lines and only 900 workers.

Mohamed Ramadan, a worker in Rock Ceramic, added that the Libyan owner Farahat al-Shirshari took refuge in Egypt and started his project, and after years of making monthly profits up to 10 million, now says the factory is making losses.

Palestine Hospital

Hany al-Katry of Palestine Hospital talked about how the new management is obstinate with old employees and doctors since 2012.

From 2012 to 2015, new investments were pumped into the hospital, but the development did not touch upon the financial system and the wages that remains the same since 2008.

Alaa Abd-el-Tawab

In the end, Alaa Abdel-Tawab, the lawyer and head of ECESR legal unit, talked about the most dangerous opponents facing labor lawyers in Egypt, which are the judges who know nothing about the social consequences of adjourning cases that can take up to 4 years. He also talked about the legislation organizing the relationships between the employer and employee (particularly laws 12/2003 and 18/2015), and the employers who are ready to pay lawyers rather than pay workers their dues.

He said closure affects workers and their families, and that local or foreign investors utilize the benefits of investing in Egypt, then close their businesses without heeding the rights of workers.

Alaa alluded to the standards of closure and the necessity of informing the workers or their union of partial or full closure, and that closure is decided through a committee that can approve or deny closure. Approval can be accompanied by putting off closure for a suitable period in the interest of all parties concerned. He concluded by iterating the rights of workers upon the approval of the closure request.