Cairo: A week-long strike at Egypt's biggest textile company may be over, but it is likely that similar events will unfold elsewhere, experts warn.
"These strikes will happen again unless workers' conditions are drastically improved," says Fouad Hashem, an economics professor.
"A comprehensive reform programme should be worked out to ensure that workers receive reasonable wages to cope with high inflation rates," he told Gulf News.
Annual inflation rates in Egypt reached 8.5 per cent last August compared with 8.9 per cent in August 2006, according to a recent cabinet report.
An estimated 27,000 workers at the Misr Textile Company in Al Mahalla Al Kubra, some 130km north of Cairo, went back to work on Monday after going on strike for a week in protest of the low wages and increments.
Negotiations
Their return to work was the result of negotiations between their representatives and the government, which agreed to grant the workers a bonus equivalent to wages of 70 days, instead of 20 days before the sit-in.
Under the deal, the company's general assembly will meet in November to determine additional payments to the labour and to increase their food allowance.
Workers have threatened to go on strike again if the government does not follow through with its commitments. The strike has cost the company millions of dollars in losses.
"A series of strikes, which Egypt has seen over the past two years should prompt the government to reconsider its controversial privatisation programme and enhance insurance health services available to employees, especially in the textile industry," said Hashem.
Egyptian officials accused the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest opposition force, of orchestrating a spate of nationwide labour protests to embarrass the government.
The banned group, which has 88 members in Egypt's 454-seat legislature, vehemently denied the accusations, saying that the strikes were a natural outcome of the government's flawed policy towards workers' rights.
The latest strike has, however, thrust into focus workers' woes in this country, the Arab world's most populous. "We are less fortunate than employees at state-owned companies," says Abdul Hafiz Madkour, who works at a private textile factory near Cairo.
"At least they have the right to go on strike to vent their anger over bad conditions. We don't." Madkour, 48, complains of poor wages, long working hours and a lack of healthcare and insurance services.
"There is no union to defend the rights of private sector employees after the government has left them as an easy prey for employers," he said.
"Our colleagues in the public sector work for eight hours. We work for 12 hours and often are not paid for public holidays."
Madkour, a father of five, says his monthly salary hardly reaches 500 Egyptian pounds [about Dh330]. "How can a family survive on this pittance?" he asks.
