Administrative Adjournment | North Giza Misdemeanor Court (Labor Division) Postpones Trial of Al-Bawaba News Management in Minimum Wage Case
On 23 February 2026, the North Giza Misdemeanor Court (Labor Division) administratively adjourned the trial of the legal representative of Al-Bawaba News in Misdemeanor Case No. 133 of 2026, concerning the alleged failure to implement the decision mandating application of the statutory minimum wage to the newspaper’s employees. The adjournment was ordered due to an administrative error in the delivery of a set of case files to the session clerk.
Counsel for the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) stated that such procedural errors are not uncommon in court proceedings and do not indicate any intent to obstruct or deliberately delay the adjudication of the case.
The Dokki Labor Office had referred Complaint No. 275, filed by employees of Al-Bawaba News, to prosecution after determining that the company’s management committed a violation by failing to comply with National Wages Council Resolution No. 15 of 2025, which establishes the statutory minimum wage. Such failure constitutes a breach of Article 104 of Law No. 14 of 2025, due to the non-application of the minimum wage to the employees concerned.
ECESR has undertaken full legal representation of a number of affected journalists at Al-Bawaba News, pursuing all necessary judicial and administrative procedures to safeguard their financial and employment rights vis-à-vis the management of the المؤسسة.
This followed meetings between ECESR lawyers and a group of journalists to assess available legal remedies after the journalists had submitted collective formal complaints to the Dokki Labor Office documenting alleged administrative arbitrariness and prevention from work, as well as subsequent arbitrary dismissal and the withholding of wages, in clear violation of the provisions of the Labor Law and applicable constitutional guarantees.
The origins of the dispute date back to the final quarter of 2025, when the management allegedly initiated retaliatory measures in response to the journalists’ demands for implementation of the statutory minimum wage. Approximately 70 journalists staged a sit-in at the newspaper’s headquarters on Mossadak Street for 56 days, during which essential services were reportedly cut off. The sit-in was 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 allegedly withheld salaries beginning in November 2025 and filed complaints accusing several journalists of “participating in an unauthorized demonstration.” The complaints extended to Syndicate Board Members Iman Afouf and Mahmoud Kamel, following the Syndicate Council’s public solidarity—under the leadership of its President, Khaled El-Balshy—with the journalists’ demands.
