23 February Hearing in Lawsuit Against Al-Bawaba News for Failure to Implement the Minimum Wage; Labor Office Confirms Journalists’ Claims
The North Giza Misdemeanor Court (Labor Circuit) has scheduled a hearing for 23 February 2026 to try the legal representative of Al-Bawaba News on charges of failure to implement the statutory minimum wage for the newspaper’s employees. The case is registered as Misdemeanor Case No. 133 of 2026.
The case was referred to trial by the Dokki Labor Office, following Complaint No. 275 filed by employees of Al-Bawaba News, after the Labor Office established that the company’s management had committed a violation by failing to implement National Wages Council Decision No. 15 of 2025, which sets the minimum wage. This failure constitutes a breach of Article 104 of Law No. 14 of 2025, due to the management’s refusal to apply the minimum wage to employees.
The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights has assumed full legal representation of a number of affected journalists at Al-Bawaba News, and has undertaken all judicial and administrative procedures necessary to protect their financial and employment rights against the newspaper’s management.
This followed meetings between the Center’s lawyers and a group of journalists to examine available legal defense mechanisms, after the journalists submitted collective formal complaints to the Dokki Labor Office. These complaints documented instances of administrative intransigence, unlawful prevention from work, subsequent arbitrary dismissal, and the withholding of salaries, all in clear violation of the Labor Law and constitutional guarantees.
The background to the dispute dates back to the final quarter of 2025, when the management began taking arbitrary measures in response to journalists’ demands for the application of the minimum wage. Approximately 70 journalists staged a sit-in lasting 56 days at the newspaper’s headquarters on Mossadeq Street, during which they were subjected to the cutoff of essential services. The sit-in was ultimately forcibly dispersed on the evening of Sunday, 5 January 2026, compelling the journalists to relocate their protest to the premises of the Journalists’ Syndicate.
In parallel, the management escalated its actions by withholding salary payments beginning in November 2025, and by filing police complaints accusing several journalists of “unauthorized demonstration.” These complaints also targeted Iman Awf and Mahmoud Kamel, members of the Syndicate Council, due to the Council’s solidarity—under the leadership of Khaled El-Balshy—with the journalists’ demands.
It is worth noting that the lawsuit filed by the Journalists’ Syndicate seeking to suspend the liquidation of the Al-Bawaba News institution was adjourned to 17 February 2026. The adjournment was granted at the request of counsel for Abdel Rahim Ali, to allow time to review the documents submitted by the Syndicate. To date, no official documents have been presented establishing that any actual steps have been taken to initiate the alleged liquidation process.
