The Minister of Labor Force Should Abide To Court Decisions To Dismantle Boardsof The General Unions and The General Labor Union

The undersigned submitted an appeal to urge the minister of labor forces to abide to court decision to dismantle boards of the general unions and the general labor union and assign committees to run both till a judicial committee takes the responsibility to run and monitor labor elections on all levels as per court rulings and as per article #41 of labor law 35/1976.

The appeal reads :

“ Mubarak’s regime used to support labor leaders who approved of the regime policies regardless of the workers’ interests. It reached the extent of ignoring court decision. We obtained a court decision to cancel all decrees regulating union committees’ elections in 2001- 2006 session as per the court decision 12504/jy55. The elections were conducted in the absence of judicial monitoring contrary to article #41 of the labor law 35/1976. Members of the elections supervision committees were candidates at the same time which enabled them to manipulate election results.

The labor union and the ministry of labor forces challenged the ruling by the appeals 661,708 /48. On 6/5/2006 , the supreme administrative court rejected both appeals and upheld the administrative court decision. The elections of 2006- 2011 were also run contrary to article #41 and with no judicial supervision leading to that  candidates  became  members of the election committees. We challenged the three decrees regulating all three elections of labor committees , general union and the general labor union

The court decided to stop the enforcement of these decrees by the decisions :

1-   Decision 1827 /jy61 issued on 2/11/2006 to stop enforcing the ministerial decree #296/2006 to  regulate labor committees elections

2-   Decision 3469/ jy61 issued on 12/11/2006 to  stop enforcing the ministerial decree #298/2006 to  regulate the general union elections.

3-   Decision 4382/ jy61 issued on 26/11/2006 to  stop enforcing the ministerial decree #300/2006 to  regulate the general labor union elections.

All these decisions should be immediately implemented and will be upheld by the supreme administrative court based on the prior incident of rejecting the appeals 661,708/sjy48.

However, the former labor force minister refrained from abiding to the law to protect the boards of the union and the general union”.

We urge you to uphold the rule of law and implement the above listed court decisions. We request to dismantle the boards of the labor committees , general union and the general labor union and to assign a neutral committee to run the unions . We also request to run and monitor labor elections on all levels under judicial supervision as per article #41 of labor law 35/1976. The undersigned urge the minister to effectively  implement the court decisions.

 The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights

 Hisham Mubarak Law Center
Ma’an Campaign for trade union freedoms
The Egyptian Committee for the protection of labor rights