“Though three years have passed since the 25 January Revolution of 2011 to which the workers of this country contributed massively their condition continues to be marked by increasing poverty and hunger. We are going from bad to worse,” says Kamal Abbas, general coordinator of the Centre for Workers and Trade Union Services (CWTUS). Abbas was addressing a meeting of trade unionists and workers' rights activist at a CWTUS sponsored workshop held on Friday to discuss the minimum wage, writes Faiza Rady. It is within the context of dramatically deteriorating living conditions, compounded by the non-payment of incentives and the limited and piecemeal disbursement of an inadequate minimum wage, that Abbas explains the wave of strikes and labour protests that erupted in recent weeks. Helwan Iron and Steel Factory workers, Gazl Al-Mahalla textile workers, Kittan Tanta textile workers, postal workers, Real Estate Authority workers, Cairo bus drivers, Faragallah meat production workers, health workers -including pharmacists, physicians and dentists - have all gone on strike. The government's mismanagement of the minimum wage issue was ultimately the straw that broke the camel's back, triggering industrial action and, activists believe, Al-Beblawi cabinet's downfall. “Payment of the minimum wage was essentially decreed for political reasons,” says Abdel-Ghaffar Shokr, founder of the People's Socialist Alliance and Vice President of the National Committee for Human Rights. “In the aftermath of the million-strong people's demonstrations of 30 June 2013 the interim government put on a show to demonstrate they had the political will to realise the revolutionary demands of 25 January 2011 for ‘bread, freedom and social justice'. However, because they insisted on doing business as usual their scheme was doomed to fail. The minimum wage they decreed was assessed unilaterally, in line with the same old scenario, from the top-down, bypassing workers' representatives, the newly-formed federations of free trade unions.” The first free trade union – independent of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) which was established in 1957 by president Gamal Abdel-Nasser as an arm of the state — was formed in 2009 as a result of a long and protracted struggle by Tax Authority workers to break free of the government-controlled federation. In the wake of the fervor and militancy of 25 January, the call to free the workers' movement from the stranglehold of the ETUF grew and led to the formation of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress (EDLC) and the Permanent Congress of Alexandria Workers (PCAW) – which now include 1,800 “real” unions, says Abbas. “On 15 September the Al-Beblawi Cabinet announced the formation of the National Committee for Wages (NCW) which bypassed the independent federations to include instead four delegates from the ETUF of ill-repute, a so-called federation that has consistently taken an anti-labour posture, only authorizing three strikes over the past 15 years. The government's committee excluded genuine labour representatives from negotiations over the minimum wage.” The NCW's decision to set the minimum wage at LE 1,200 (172 dollars) is based on demands by Gazl Al-Mahalla workers, dating back to their historic strike of 6 April, 2008, that developed into a people's intifada protesting against social injustice. At the time the UN-defined poverty level was set at a daily two dollars per person. Egyptian head of households — who support on average 3.7 persons — had to make LE 1,200 just to hover above the poverty line. This was six years ago. Inflationary pressures since then mean the global definition of poverty has shifted. Between January 2010 and September 2013 prices of food staples such as vegetables and bread have soared by 21.3 per cent. The price of cereals, reports the Egyptian Food Observatory, has increased by 16.3 percent. Incidences of food insecurity rose from 14 per cent in 2009 to 17.2 per cent in 2011, affecting 13.7 million people, says the World Food Programme. Food insecurity, the main cause of malnutrition, has caused infantile stunting to increase from 23 per cent in 2005 to 29 per cent in 2009 according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population. Food insecurity and malnutrition is likely to increase because of decreasing consumption of legumes, fruits and dairy products. These statistics undermine any claims the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) definition of the minimum wage – or the living wage, to be more precise – can apply to the cabinet's decree of LE 1,200, a figure, long outdated. ILO Convention #135 of 1970 spells out that “the objectives of fixing minimum wages…should constitute one element in a policy designed to overcome poverty and to ensure the satisfaction of the needs of all workers and their families”. Yet Al-Beblawi's cabinet failed to ensure even the most basic of the working poor's needs. “What's more, the government has restricted payment of the minimum wage to a narrow section of the working class,” explains labour rights activist Adel Zakariya. “It is only those workers directly employed by a ministry who qualify for the increment. Others, who work in the state-controlled public and business sectors like the bus workers, the Tax Authority workers, the textile workers, the Suez Canal Authority workers, and a myriad of others, do not qualify – presumably because they are not affiliated to any given government ministry. Nor do those employed on temporary contracts or in private sector industry. Only 18 per cent of a workforce of 27 million is entitled to minimum wage payments.” Bureaucratic incompetence and rampant corruption mean even those who qualify for the payments may end up being excluded. “I call the minimum wage nothing but an illusion,” says Magdy Salem Hassan, President of the independent Trade Union of Helwan University Workers. “I received all the required forms from the university administration, co-signed by the Ministry of Finance, but when I went to cash the wage increments payroll refused to honour the documents saying the ministry had made a mistake, that I should reprocess the applications. I returned to the ministry where I was given the usual bureaucratic runaround by a high-level official who pledged the problem would be solved within the following week. This was last month. Our minimum wage has yet to materialise and to tell you the truth I don't believe it will.” Other problems need to be addressed beyond the bureaucratic bungling. Because of its restrictive and exclusionary strategy the National Committee for Wages failed to establish a progressive pay increase for senior workers who are currently paid the equivalent of the minimum wage. Adjustments of pensions and social security benefits to the minimum wage scale have yet to be decreed. “It is the entire public wage structure that needs to be overhauled,” says labour researcher Elhamy Al-Maghrani. “Egyptian workers are paid 20 per cent of their income as fixed salaries, while the remaining 80 per cent are defined as variable pay incentives and bonuses that may, or may not, be withheld. This is a uniquely inverted concept that urgently needs to be redressed.” The CWTUS plans to submit a paper delineating the fault lines of the minimum wage to the new cabinet which will demand a reform of the concept based on collective bargaining between labour, the government and business representatives. Gazl Al-Mahalla textile workers, who suspended their 13-day long strike on February 22, have gone back to the job, giving the new interim cabinet of Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb until 8 March to address pending issues. The Iron and Steel Factory workers announced the resumption of their strike on 1 March. For Egypt's workers the struggle goes on. If the lives of workers remain cheap in the eyes of many government officials and corporate managers, says Egyptian labour historian Joel Beinin, “the most important gain of the revolutionary movement is that workers no longer accept this”.
