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Workers and Egypt's January 25 Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2011

Joel Beinin
Joel Beinin
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

One of the less noticed events of the “January 25 Revolution,” as Egyptians call the popular uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, is the formation of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU). Its existence was announced at a press conference on January 30, 2011, in Cairo's Tahrir Square—the epicenter of the popular movement. The independent unions of Real Estate Tax Authority workers, healthcare technicians, and teachers established since 2008 initiated the new federation. They were joined by the 8.5 million-member retirees' association, which has just received permission to reorganize itself as a professional syndicate, as well as representatives of textile, pharmaceutical, chemical, iron and steel, and automotive workers from industrial zones in Cairo, Helwan, Mahalla al-Kubra, Tenth of Ramadan, and Sadat City. The independent trade union federation was the first new institution to emerge from the popular uprising, and it linked the cause of workers to what was, after January 28, an explicitly revolutionary movement.

Type
Reports from the Field
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , Fall 2011 , pp. 189 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2011

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References

NOTES

1. Center for Trade Union and Workers Services, press release, January 30, 2011 at http://www.unionbook.org/profiles/blogs/egypt-new-trade-union, accessed February 1, 2011.

2. Shafei, Omar El, “Workers, Trade Unions, and the State in Egypt: 1984–1989,” Cairo Papers in Social Science 18 (1985): 1–43Google Scholar; Pratt, Nicola Christine, The Legacy of the Corporatist State: Explaining Workers’ Responses to Economic Liberalisation in Egypt (Durham, UK, 1998)Google Scholar.

3. Pratt, The Legacy of the Corporatist State, 53–55; al-Basyuni, Mustafa and Sa'id, ‘Umar, Rayat al-idrab fi sama’ misr: 2007, haraka ‘ummaliyya jadida (Cairo, 2007), 13, 15, 19Google Scholar.

4. Calculations based on the more detailed table in Beinin, Joel, “A Workers’ Social Movement on the Margin of the Global Neoliberal Order, Egypt 2004–2009,” in Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Beinin, Joel and Vairel, Frédéric (Stanford, CA, 2011)Google Scholar.

5. This includes cost-of-living increases since a thirty-five pound per month minimum was set in 1984.

6. Comments at the launch of The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt (Washington, DC, 2010)Google Scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, February 16, 2010.

7. Stack, Liam and Mazen, Maram, “Striking Mahalla Workers Demand Govt. Fulfill Broken Promises,” Daily Star Egypt, September 27, 2007Google Scholar.

8. “Revolution-Freedom-Social Justice,” Egyptian Independent Trade Unionists' Declaration, Cairo, February 19, 2011 at http://www.arabawy.org/2011/02/21/jan25-egyworkers-egyptian-independent-trade-unionists%E2%80%99-declaration/.

9. Charbel, Jano, “New Era for Egyptian Trade Unions,” al-Masri al-Yawm, March 15, 2011 at http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/355785Google Scholar.

10. Ibid.

11. One memo is posted on the CTUWS website at http://www.ctuws.com/Default.aspx?item=851; the other was circulated by email on March 17, 2011.

12. Human Rights Watch, “Egypt: End Torture, Military Trials of Civilians,” March 11, 2011 at http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/03/11/egypt-end-torture-military-trials-civilians.

13. Shahira Amin, “Egyptian general admits ‘virginity checks’ conducted on protesters,” May 31, 2011, http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/31/egypt.virginity.tests/