After a nine-months protest at the closed Ora-Misr plant, workers take their demands to the GFTU, reports Faiza Rady A group of 36 laid-off workers from Ora-Misr company, an asbestos product plant, staged a sit-in at the Cairo headquarters of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) from 2-4 July, demanding the payment of wage arrears and compensation for occupation-related illness. On the afternoon of 4 July state security officers affiliated with the GFTU told the workers to vacate the premises but pledged that the authorities would comply with their demands. "We know that your claims are legitimate and you will be offered a fair settlement. But we can't allow you to stay here," one officer told the workers. "The country has enough problems on its hands right now and we cannot allow strikes and sit-ins at this point." The workers returned to the Ora- Misr factory in Tenth of Ramadan City, the industrial town north of Cairo, where they have spent the last nine months at a make-shift protest camp near the closed plant's gates. Ora-Misr, which used asbestos in the production of building materials, was closed down in September 2004 following a long and protracted struggle over the health hazards caused by asbestos. Until the health hazards of asbestos were recognised in the 1960s it was widely used in construction because of its ability to hold heat without catching fire. "It was used in everything from hot water pipes, to paint, to car brake pads," writes Aaron Glantz in Corpwatch, a corporate watch dog. In the United States and Europe the use of asbestos in construction has been banned since the early 1970s, though it continued to be exported to Southern countries which became a lucrative market. In 2004 the Helwan-based Centre of Workers and Trade Union Services (CWTUS) filed a complaint against Ora-Misr and the hazardous practices of the Egyptian asbestos industry which placed an estimated 10,000 workers at risk. In the same year CWTUS lodged a complaint with the International Labour Organisation while the French Union Nationale des Syndicats Autonomes registered a similar complaint with GFTU, demanding compensation for the Ora-Misr workers. Pressured by a coalition of Ora-Misr workers, Egyptian NGOs and French trade unions, the Ministry of Industry and Foreign Trade issued Decree 336 on 11 September 2004 prohibiting the use of asbestos in industrial production. When the company was finally forced to close down its owner, multi- billionaire Ahmed Lokma, fired all workers, refusing both compensation and early retirement settlements. It was in response to this that the workers set up their protest camp to publicise their demands for the payment of wages in arrears, free health care and compensation for "grave injury to health". Forty-six of the company's original work force of 120 have been diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma, an asbestos-induced lung cancer and 18 have died since 1997. Yet others are suffering from asbestosis, an obstructive lung disease caused by exposure to asbestos. At GFTU headquarters the union leadership hardly welcomed the protesters. Confined to a narrow space on the ground floor hallway they had to sleep on the steps and were denied drinking water and access to the bathrooms. Outraged, three workers started an open-ended hunger strike on the evening of 2 July. "I don't care if this hunger strike kills me," says Said Abdel-Latif Ibrahim, head of the Ora-Misr union committee. "Either we die from starvation because we now have no money to survive, or we die from cancer and asbestosis. They are killing us whatever way you choose to look at it." Since Lokma stopped paying the workers' wages in September they have been surviving on 75 per cent of their base salary, paid as a six-months emergency package by the Ministry of Manpower. This money constitutes only a fraction of actual salaries that were padded by bonuses, incentives and additional increments, and the fund has now run out, leaving the workers stranded with no income and no health care. "Our demands are simple and straightforward. We want the union to negotiate on our behalf with the prime minister, the Ministry of Manpower, the Ministry of Health and Ora-Misr owner Ahmed Lokma," says Ibrahim. The workers have asked the Ministry of Manpower to extend the emergency package for another six months, in addition to requesting an early retirement settlement and adequate compensation for the damage caused to their health. "We contacted the relevant authorities and followed all the legal procedures as soon as we got the sack but we received no response." GFTU officials claim they are working hard to settle the problem. "The workers are entitled to compensation and we are putting pressure on the government to respond to their demands," says Abdel-Moneim El-Ghazali, president of the General Union of Mechanical, Steel and Electrical Industries. In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif dated 2 July 2005, the GFTU asked the government to make emergency payments to the workers and address their grievances. The workers aren't impressed. "Why do they start writing letters now?" asks Ibrahim. "Why do we have to stage a sit-in to make them move ever so slightly? They are a union, after all, and they're supposed to represent us. But in reality they're just a bunch of government officials sitting behind desks. They're far removed from our world." If the workers distrust the union they are equally wary of the medical establishment. After plant manager Ahmed El-Dessouqi died of asbestos- related liver cancer in 1997 other workers started to show symptoms of asbestosis and were given periodic check-ups. In the beginning some were diagnosed with work-related asbestosis or mesothelioma and received compensation and early retirement packages, but the company soon stopped the practice. "They went to a judge who ruled that we should go to a state hospital to get a second medical opinion, and the doctors there said there was no direct correlation between the cancer cases and our exposure to asbestos," says Ibrahim. The evidence, however, is damning. A study by the Egyptian National Institute of Occupational Health concluded that the degree of clinical manifestations of symptoms is correlative to the period of exposure. In a random sample of workers with less than five- year exposure to asbestos 42 per cent show clinical symptoms, whereas 83 per cent are affected after 20-25 years on the job. According to the medical journal Cancer "in the United States mesothelioma in males between 1970 and 1984 is directly associated with environmental and occupational exposure to asbestos, mostly in areas of asbestos product plants and shipbuilding facilities." Among the Ora-Misr workers the toll is higher. "We are all sick," says Ibrahim, "but we refuse to die in silence." Additional reporting by Sara Abou Bakr
