Textile workers fightback in Egypt

The demonstration, which lasted for roughly an hour, soon swelled as the Mahalla citizens joined the workers and started marching through the streets of the town. The estimates I heard from my sources in Cario and Mahalla varied.. Some said 5,000 more citizens joined the march, while others put the number at an extra 10,000…

The APF reported:

At least 10,000 employees of Egypt's biggest textile factory protested against price hikes on Monday, demanding a sharp rise in the minimum wage nationwide in the first such protest in decades.

Thousands of textile workers gathered at the Ghazl al-Mahalla factory north of Cairo shouting slogans to protest against the rise in the price of basic commodities, a security source told Agence France-Presse.

The workers are demanding that the minimum wage be raised to 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($218) a month for all workers around the country.

"This is the first time there's a big workers' demonstration for national demands," said Sameh Naguib, a sociologist at the American University in Cairo. "This hasn't happened for decades."

It is the latest in a spate of industrial action in the country. Egyptian civil servants working for the Real Estate tax office held a sit-in in December demanding to raise their monthly average from 300 pounds to 1,500.

In September, at least 24,000 workers at the Mahalla factory went on strike over unpaid profit shares and low wages. The government subsequently agreed to their demands and similar strikes were held in other factories.

"Maybe it's because of this year of strikes, there's a lot of pressure (on the government) to come up with a statement or a plan of action," said Naguib. "Under this pressure they have to do something serious."