Egypt’s first independent union was launched this week in a potentially significant move for the country’s labor movement and for freedom of association under an increasingly authoritarian regime. The Solidarity Center reports that the 27,000-member Real Estate Tax Authority Union was formed when workers voted to form a union following a national strike and a 12-day sit-in by 10,000 employees in front of the prime minister’s office in Cairo.
Throughout their campaign, the workers received support from the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services which issued a December 2008 appeal for solidarity and helped RETA hold its first constituent conference. The CTUWS called on international labor organizations to support the independent union, “a basic granted right as stated in international treaties ratified by the Egyptian government.”
Democracy, labor and civil society groups have been harassed, closed or denied registration by the regime in a concerted attempt to curtail the independent political action and organization that emerged during the short-lived Arab Spring of 2005. The Association for Human Rights and Legal Aid was closed by the authorities on the grounds that it had illegally received funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, while the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services was also shut down in 2006 when the government deemed that its activities in support of unions independent of state control were endangering national security.
As a recent Freedom House report noted:
Although Article 55 of Egypt’s 1971 constitution guarantees freedom of association, this right is heavily restricted in practice. During 2007, several NGOs were closed for violating laws on freedom of association. On March 29, the authorities closed the Cairo headquarters and the Naj Hamadi and Mahalla branches of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), an organization that educates workers about their rights and reports on labor issues. The group was accused of provoking illegal strikes.
The center has upset state officials by exposing fraudulent elections within the state-run official unions, including the most recent elections for seats in local branches of the 23 national unions. The center exposed official Egyptian Trade Union Federation collaboration between the ruling National Democratic Party’s cadres and security forces to stop opposition labor activists from contesting the elections.
The CTUWS revealed that that the elections “were the worst ever in terms of violations” and were “undemocratic and non-transparent” shortly after Minister of Manpower Aisha Abul Hadi had declared them “impartial, clean, and democratic.”
Egyptian public sector workers celebrate the launch of their new independent trade union. Photo credit: Hossam el-Hamalawy
The broader political implications of the independent union’s formation are as yet unclear. According to one analysis, fissures could emerge within the state-backed federation which could have a “ripple effect” in the political arena. “The establishment of independent union federations has been in the heart of the political transformation process in former dictatorships like Poland, South Korea, South Africa and others,” an observer notes.
On the other hand, union density – the proportion of workers in union membership – is considerably lower than in the above cases. The unionized workforce is largely confined to workers in state-owned enterprises, representing little more than 7% of total employment. But the official public sector unions play little active role in collective bargaining or representing workers’ grievances and union membership in the private sector companies is so small as to be of no economic, social or political consequence.
[...] at Democracy Digest, Michael Allen writes “Egypt’s first independent union was launched this week in a potentially significant [...]