VIDEO: The Corporation

The Corporation (Full Documentary)

Workers question state claims of only 12.8% unemployment rate

Mada Masr

Workers question official statistics on unemployment figures

Monday, November 16, 2015

Jano Charbel 

According to figures published on Sunday by the state’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), unemployment increased slightly in the third quarter of 2015, affecting 12.8 percent of the Egyptian workforce.

CAPMAS reports there are currently 3.6 million unemployed Egyptians. According to these findings, the Egyptian workforce currently numbers around 28 million (from a total domestic population of over 89.4 million, with another eight million reportedly living abroad.)

Worker and labor rights activists, however, are questioning CAPMAS’s latest figures, claiming they are inaccurate.

CAPMAS indicates that 12.8 percent represents a minor increase in the national unemployment rate, as the second quarter of 2015 had registered a rate of 12.7 percent. This increase translates into 78,000 additional unemployed workers and employees in the third quarter of this year.

The figures do show improvement compared to the same quarter last year, when the official unemployment rate was 13.1 percent.

However, Fatma Ramadan, an industrial-safety inspector at the Ministry of Manpower and independent union organizer, believes that the unemployment figures cited by CAPMAS "are inaccurate and have been largely downplayed."

“The real unemployment rate may be up to double that which they are currently claiming,” she asserts.

"We demand genuine and accurate statistics regarding unemployment, so that we can find genuine solutions to this national problem,” Ramadan explains.

“Apparently, this unemployment rate doesn't include or take into account factors such as seasonal unemployment, temporary employment, masked and hidden unemployment, or child labor.”

Among those not accounted for within the statistics are homemakers, domestic help, and many other workers in the informal sector.

“CAPMAS calculates unemployment rates based on the numbers of those actively seeking employment — primarily at the offices of the Ministry of Manpower," Ramadan explains. “What typically happens is that if a jobless worker doesn’t find a job opportunity through the ministry, they don’t keep coming back.”

Ramadan adds that these workers may instead seek job opportunities via private employment firms, or informal networks.

Ramadan highlighted in particular the mass-layoffs associated with the closure of hundreds of state-owned factories since the 2011 revolution, adding that only a trivial number of new factories or industries are being established.

“The government is not concerned with the plight of unemployed workers, and this is reflected in the lack of implementation of judicial verdicts demanding that stalled public sector companies be re-operated, and that thousands of workers be reinstated,” Ramadan argues.

Proportional to the workforce, the unemployment rate in urban areas of Cairo currently amounts to 15 percent while in rural areas it reportedly amounts to 11.2 percent. These rates are gradually increasing – in both the countryside and cities – in comparison to the past four quarters.

CAPMAS issued additional details regarding the unemployment rate. According to its breakdown, 9.3 percent of males in the workforce are unemployed, while 24.9 percent of females in the workforce are currently jobless. Over the last few quarters, the unemployment rate continues to gradually increase among women, while it has slightly decreased among men.

Hisham al-Oql, one of nearly 600 former workers at the Tanta Flax and Oils Company, who has been unemployed for the past seven years, also points to the general governmental disinterest in labor rights.

Oql dismisses CAPMAS’s unemployment figures as inaccurate. "Real unemployment probably amounts to more than double the figure they’ve cited.”

“We are filing further legal appeals for the implementation of the court verdicts," Oql explains, referring to those issued in 2011 for the re-operation of stalled companies and reinstatement of workers. "Yet the government is simply ignoring our demands, and refusing to respect judicial rulings,” he adds.

Fifty-year-old Oql adds that he has to rely on his mother for financial assistance, so that he can support his wife and son.

For the past four years, Oql has been seeking to unify the efforts and demands of thousands of other jobless workers to demand the re-opening of the following stalled companies: Tanta Flax and Oils, Simo Paper, Nile Cotton Ginning, Nasr Steam Boilers and Omar Effendy department stores, among others.

Oql said the government talks of promoting production and creating additional job opportunities, but is not doing so effectively.

Ramadan also pointed to “an increase in the rate of punitive sackings of workers,” including laborers who are fired for organizing independent unions in their workplaces for protesting, striking, or "calling for the accountability of corrupt administrators.”

According to the independent unionist, the fourth quarter of 2015 may bear the grimmest unemployment rate yet, as tourism has been hit hard over the past two weeks in Sharm el-Sheikh and elsewhere, amid allegations of a bomb on board a Russian Metrojet passenger plane that crashed in Sinai, killing all 224 passengers and crew members on October 31.

Ramadan concluded that this employment crisis coincides with the high season of foreign tourism to Egypt.

*Photo courtesy of Aawsat.com

Haunting photos of children toiling in Egypt’s limestone quarries

WIRED.com

Haunting Photos of the Children Toiling in Egypt’s Limestone Quarries

September 3, 2014 


Pete Brook

The haunting figures in Myriam Abdelaziz’s photographs look otherworldly as they emerge from the haze wearing makeshift masks and protective eyewear. But they are not the stuff of science fiction, but a harsh reality.

They are the limestone workers of Egypt, eking out a living doing back-breaking work in searing temperatures.

They also happen to be children.

Abdelaziz’s series Menya’s Kids chronicles the children who toil in the limestone quarries south of Cairo, leading lives as hard as the rocks they carve from the earth.

“The work is very dangerous,” says Abdelaziz. “Many children working there die prematurely, from electrocution or from injury due to heavy machinery. Also common are permanent injuries such as the loss of an arm or a leg.”

Menya, on the banks of the Nile River 150 miles south of the Egyptian capital, has more than 300 quarries employing 15,000 people. Many of them are children as young as 10; the youngest workers follow the stone-cutting machines, stacking bricks and bagging the ever-present dust. Nothing in the mines is wasted.

The quarries are central to the city’s economy, yet rarely chronicled. Menya’s Kids attempts to illuminate this dark corner of the Egyptian workforce. Employing children in the mines is illegal, so it is no surprise then that most quarry owners refused Abdelaziz entry. “They understood that international exposure could back fire on their business,” she says.

And what a business it is. “Child labor is a dominating phenomenon in Egypt,” reads the opening line of a 2011 report on child workers by the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University.

Between 3 and 15 percent of Egyptian children have been classified as child laborers, or between 1.3 million and 3 million children. The figures, compiled by NGOs and independent agencies, vary widely because most child labor is seasonal (cotton harvesting), informal (selling goods on the street), or unmonitored (domestic work.) Whatever the number, most agree poverty is to blame.


“Children take jobs wherever and whenever an extra hand is needed,” says Abdelaziz. “Some families cannot survive if everyone is not working so child labor is seen as something common.”
An average quarry workers earns between $7 and $14 daily. That’s a lot compared to farmers, carpenters and mechanics. That makes the work very appealing to a family on the edge.

Eight years ago, the World Bank worked with the Catholic organization Caritas and Wadi El-Nil Association for the Protection of Quarry Workers to remove kids from quarries by 2008. But efforts to raise awareness of the problem, get the child workers back in school and train them for less dangerous jobs did little to improve the situation—which has been exacerbated by the economic instability that followed the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Change is unlikely to come quickly, but Abdelaziz remains hopeful. And she is doing her part to help. Beyond illuminating the issue, she has donated her photos to a local charity that provides alternatives to lives in the mines.

“Sending children to work is an easy way to increase a family’s income. Those who are poor and uneducated cannot think of any other way to survive,” she says. “Mentalities need to change.”


*Photos by Myriam Abdelaziz

Labor rights & violations in Egypt's new constitution

Mada Masr

An analysis of the draft constitution

Experts weight in on possible impacts of forced labor, child labor, military tribunals, restrictions on unionization, and the elimination of labor quotas

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Jano Charbel

The 2013 draft constitution contains a number of provisions which some feared could be used to curb labor rights and freedoms. Other articles could be used to violate basic, internationally recognized, labor rights.

The draft constitution also protects the continued use of forced labor, child labor, military tribunals for civilians, restrictions on the plurality of trade unions and professional syndicates, along with limitations on the right to strike for certain professions.

It also, however, includes measures which could be used to increase labor rights, including workers’ right to a minimum wage and a maximum wage for public-sector administrators, along with the right to establish labor (or class-based) political parties.

Most notably, the charter removed a unique populist measure from the era of President Gamal Abdel Nasser half a century ago, by scrapping the 50 percent quota of workers’ and farmers’ representatives in parliament.

“The provisions of the new constitution are more specific and direct than the constitutions of 1971 and 2012,” says Talal Shokr of the independent Egyptian Democratic Labor Confederation.

“For the first time, the Egyptian constitution has become far less ambiguous,” he explains. “It clearly spells out housing and health rights, along with other social and economic rights.”

Shokr says the charter protects basic rights, including the right to social security, employment opportunities, collective bargaining, and safeguards against punitive sackings of workers and punitive dissolutions of labor organizations.

It also outlines provisions for Egypt’s workers, small farmers, peasants, fishermen, persons with special needs, pensioners, minorities and women, he says.

“Nonetheless, there are a number of reservations I have regarding extant articles in the constitution,” Shokr says.

“For example, the right to strike, according to Article 15, should be regulated in accordance with international law, not in accordance with yet another intrusive and restrictive Egyptian labor law.”

According to Saud Omar, of the independent Suez Regional Union Federation, “This new constitution contains many of the same labor violations contained in the Muslim Brotherhood’s 2012 Constitution; it’s merely another version of it.

“Many of its provisions are worryingly similar to the 2012 Constitution, and its predecessors,” she says.

According to Article 93 of the new draft constitution, “The state is committed to the agreements, covenants, and international human rights conventions that Egypt has ratified. They have the force of law after publication in accordance with the specified circumstances.”

Yet a number of provisions in the draft constitution appear to directly contravene such international human rights and labor instruments that the Egyptian State has voluntarily ratified.

FORCED LABOR
Despite the fact that Egypt ratified the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Conventions 29 and 105 Concerning Forced Labor, and the Abolition of Forced Labor) in the 1950s, Article 12 in the new draft constitution still stipulates that “[t]here can be no forced labor except in accordance with the law, and with the objective of performing a public service for a defined period of time and in return for a fair wage.”

For Omar, it is “shocking to find that in 2014 forced labor is still being stipulated for in the national constitution, and is meant to be upheld with a governing law.”

She maintains that forced labor should be outlawed in all its forms, under all pretexts, in accordance with the labor and human rights conventions to which Egypt is a state party.

Shokr also explains that there should be no law governing the conditions of forced labor.

“We had hoped that this provision would be scrapped from the constitution altogether, not merely amended. There must be no provision allowing for forced labor in the constitution or in any other laws,” he said.

CHILD LABOR
Following in the footsteps of the 2012 Constitution, the new draft stipulates in Article 80 that the state shall protect children and shield them from all abuse, mistreatment and exploitation.

“It is prohibited to employ children prior to reaching the age of completing their basic education, and is prohibited to employ them in jobs exposing them to hazards,” it reads.

Egypt’s basic education concludes at the age of 14 or 15, while the age of majority is set at 18 years.
Subsequent laws governing this constitutional article should comply with the ILO’s Conventions 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor (which Egypt ratified in 2002), and Convention 138 on the Minimum Age (ratified in 1999), which sets the minimum age for legal child labor at 15.

Nonetheless, millions of Egyptian children are reportedly employed in agriculture, industry and the service sectors well before they have completed their basic education, or prior to the age of 15.

MILITARY TRIBUNALS
The draft constitution of 2014 continues to enshrine military trials against civilians and non-military employees.

According to Article 204, civilians may be brought to stand trial before military tribunals for “crimes constituting a direct assault on military facilities, barracks, or whatever falls under their authority; military or border zones; its equipment, vehicles, weapons, ammunition, documents, military secrets, public funds or military factories; crimes related to conscription; or crimes that represent a direct assault against its officers or personnel because of the performance of their duties.

The law defines such crimes and determines the other competencies of the Military Judiciary.

Civilians are often denied their due-process rights under such exceptional courts, and are also denied the right to appeal military courts’ verdicts.

According to Omar, this article “empowers the armed forces to continue sending civilian workers who protest at army-owned enterprises to military trials, along with conscripted troops, journalists, media crews, and just about anybody else who questions them.”

Omar explains that this provision has been preserved in the constitution, while the interim authorities have issued laws strictly curtailing freedom of assembly and the right to protest.

“Together these laws will naturally be used to crack down on labor unrest and industrial actions in the future,” she warns.

Shokr echoed her sentiment, saying that this provision may be used against anyone who protests or holds strikes at any of the numerous military-owned enterprises, including at non-military production sites and factories.

Article 204 of the draft constitution apparently contravenes Article 14 of the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which stipulates judicial procedural fairness and the rights of the accused, which the Egyptian State voluntarily ratified in 1982.

RESTRICTIONS ON UNIONIZATION WITHIN GOVERNMENT BODIES
While Article 76 of the draft constitution safeguards the right to democratically establish trade unions, it adds a novel and vague provision stipulating that such unions “may not be established within governmental bodies.”

This new provision, not included in any constitution before, directly violates ILO Conventions 87 and 98 concerning freedom of association, and the right to organize, which Egypt ratified in the 1950s.

“What do they mean by preventing unionization with government bodies?” Shokr asks. "This is unheard of. This is a clear violation of the ILO conventions that Egypt has ratified. These conventions only grant states the power to prohibit unionization within their police or armed forces, not in any other governmental body.

He deemed this “an unprecedented breach of labor rights.”

DENYING THE PLURALITY OF PROFESSIONAL SYNDICATES
According to a provision introduced in the 2012 Constitution, and enshrined in the new draft constitution as Article 77, “not more than one professional syndicate may be established for each profession. “

This article pertains not to Egypt’s labor unions, but to professional associations, including the general syndicates of teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers and others.

Nonetheless, Article 77 remains in direct violation of ILO Conventions 87 and 98, which guarantee employees the right to establish any professional organization, union or syndicate for all legally recognized professions.

“This is an unwarranted intervention into the liberties of Egypt’s professionals, and a violation of their organizational rights in accordance to international law,” Shokr says.

According to Amr al-Shoura, board member of the Doctors’ Syndicate, this article limits the rights of doctors and other professionals, as well as their syndicate freedoms.

Shoura pointed out that a nearly identical article was introduced by the Muslim Brotherhood’s constituent assembly in 2012 to ensure the ruling regimes’ control over professional associations. The Muslim Brotherhood had dominated the boards of numerous professional syndicates for nearly three decades.

“Since 2011, many doctors had been discussing the establishment of an independent or parallel doctors’ syndicate to better represent them,” he says. Yet such ambitions for syndicate plurality have now been rendered unconstitutional.

The 50 PERCENT QUOTA
Perhaps the most controversial amendment made to the Constitution of 2012, in terms of labor rights, was the scrapping of the 50 percent quota for representatives of workers and farmers in both houses of parliament. This was a populist measure included in the Constitution of 1964 at the behest of Nasser’s regime.

A host of labor unions and farmers’ organizations have recently denounced the scrapping of the quota.

In November, Abdel Fattah Ibrahim, president of the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) and a member of the 50-person constituent assembly, withdrew from the constitution-drafting process in protest at the cancellation of the quota.

“Out of his anguish at the current condition of workers and farmers, the late President Abdel Nasser must be rolling over in his grave,” he said in an earlier interview.

Ironically, despite pulling out of the constituent assembly, Ibrahim has been mobilizing and campaigning for a “yes” vote among the ETUF’s nationwide membership of some four million workers.

Ibrahim has commented that the ETUF endorses the draft constitution as a part and parcel of the interim government’s political roadmap for the country.

Critics of the 50 percent quota claim that it did not genuinely represent either workers or farmers, but rather the ruling regimes’ loyalists.

Explains Omar, “I opposed the 50 percent quota as it failed to represent the working classes. However, I now fear that there will be no representation whatsoever for workers or farmers in the next parliament.”

He adds, “We should have held on to the 50 percent quota, for at least one or two parliamentary terms, so as to enable workers and farmers to establish viable political parties through which they could compete for seats in parliament.”

The new draft constitution has lifted a prohibition on labor-based or class-based parties, thus facilitating the establishment of such political entities for both workers and farmers.

Despite the scrapping of the workers’ and farmers’ quota in parliament, the new draft constitution still maintains this 50 percent quota for local town councils, as is stipulated in Article 180.

*Photo by Jano Charbel

Egypt's Constitution curtails labor rights & workers' freedoms

Egypt Independent

Egypt's Constitution seen to curtail labor rights and workers freedoms 

January 22, 2013

Jano Charbel 

Labor provisions in Egypt's new Constitution are worrying workers and unionists alike, who fear that a lot of room has been left to restrict labor rights.

Drafted by an Islamist-dominated assembly, the new Constitution maintains the Nasser-era workers’ quotas in company administrations and reserves 50 percent of seats in parliament for representatives of workers and farmers.

It also maintains many of the labor provisions in the 1971 Constitution, which workers deem to be outdated — even detrimental — such as an article allowing forced labor.

Even some of the novel articles may end up negatively effecting Egypt’s workforce, namely stipulations seen as normalizing child labor, others legitimizing the military trials of civilians that may be used against striking workers, as well as new restrictions that may serve to outlaw numerous professional associations, particularly independent unions and syndicates.

The vague terminology of the new charter leaves room for interventionist legislation. For example, while Article 63 mentions “the right to peaceful strike”— not mentioned in Egypt’s older constitutions — the legislation that is being issued to regulate this article suggest that the right to strike will be curtailed.

Municipal laws regulating workers' rights indicate that Egypt's new ruling regime aims to keep both workers' and union movements on a short leash. These including Presidential Decree 97/2012 amending Trade Union Law 35/1976, Law 105/2012 regulating street vendors, and the Shura Council’s draft law on protests and strikes.

UNION PLURALITY & DEMOCRACY

Since the 25 January uprising, more than 1,000 independent unions were established nationwide, some in non-unionized workforces, others in parallel to existing unions affiliated to the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF).

In parallel to the official syndicates, two independent teachers’ unions were established while at least three press syndicates were created. However, the status of these independent entities is being brought into question in light of Egypt’s new Constitution.

Articles 51 to 53 stipulate union freedoms but place limitations on these freedoms. The restrictive Article 53 contradicts the provisions of Article 51, which stipulates “the right to establish associations and civil institutions, subject to notification only. Such institutions shall operate freely, and be deemed legal persons.”

Former Minister of Manpower, Ahmad Hassan al-Borei, declared that these constitutional articles "fail to protect union plurality and democracy." In turn, they stand in "violation of International Labor Organization’s conventions 87 and 98," concerning freedom of association, the right to organize, and collective bargaining, which Egypt ratified since the 1950s but has largely failed to uphold.

A newly added provision, Article 53 limits the plurality of professional associations by allowing only one professional syndicate per profession. It also says “authorities may not disband the boards of professional syndicates except with a court order, and may not place them under sequestration.”

As a founding member of the Independent Teachers' Syndicate — Egypt's second independent professional association, established in 2010 — Abdel Hafiz Tayil expressed his disillusionment with the new Constitution.

Still, he says, "Article 53 will not affect our syndicate or its legal status because we are registered with the Ministry of Manpower as an independent labor union — not a professional syndicate."

The teacher explains that according to Article 51, the Ministry of Manpower cannot dissolve syndicates or unions without a court order. Rather, it’s Article 52 that may be problematic.

Tayil says, “It is Article 52 that is more likely to affect us. While this article stipulates the right to establish unions, it does not mention how to register such unions.”

He clarified that a new trade union law will regulate Article 52, and will open the door to intervention from the state. The manpower ministry may in the future issue decrees that “negatively affect the right to establish unions," he says, “…especially independent unions. The minister may decline to recognize these new associations and refuse to grant them a legal [status].”

Tayil thinks that Egypt’s new ruling powers “will formulate laws according to their whims,” and to combat this, “popular resistance to unjust draft laws is the only way to keep authorities from issuing additionally repressive labor and union legislation."

According to Talal Shokr, an executive board member of the Egyptian Democratic Labor Congress (EDLC), "The Brotherhood has historically had a strong presence amongst certain professional syndicates,” particularly doctors, lawyers and engineers. 

He adds, “They sought to solidify their hold on professional syndicates through their constitution, while simultaneously moving into the sphere of labor unions, where they had a negligible presence.”

Shokr claims that moves are being made to "Brotherhoodize labor unions through [Brotherhood-affiliated Manpower Minister] Khaled al-Azhary and his appointment of tens of officials in the ETUF."

He thinks the minister will become “increasingly obstructive towards attempts at establishing independent unions, while openly rejecting any attempts to establish alternate professional syndicates."

Late last year, the EDLC and the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions both called on workers to vote against the draft constitution in the referendum, claiming that its provisions strip them of their basic rights. The Constitution passed however, with a 63.8 percent “yes” vote amid a low turnout of around 30 percent.

MINIMUM & MAXIMUM WAGE

Controversial Article 14 of the new constitution is nearly identical to Article 23 of the 1971 charter, linking wages with production and stipulating that a national minimum wage be established to “guarantee decent living standards for all citizens.”

Mohamed Abdel Galeel, an administrative worker, criticizes the article for tying “wages to production, not to rising prices or inflation. It does not take into consideration workers' use of old and outdated machinery, and the malfunction of these machines."

"How are we to support and feed ourselves with our poor wages in a future characterized by skyrocketing living expenses, the lifting of subsidies, public spending cuts, and tax hikes?" he asks.

Prior to and in the aftermath of the 25 January uprising, a main labor demand has been the establishment of a minimum wage between LE 1,200 and LE 1,500. In October 2011, however, Egypt’s Cabinet set a unified minimum wage of around half that, at LE 700. Even so, this minimum wage is yet to be enforced in the public and private sectors.

In April 2012, the now dissolved People’s Assembly set a maximum wage of LE 50,000, but only within the public sector. This law stipulates that the cap on wages should not exceed 35 times the minimum wage, although workers have been demanding that the maximum wage be no more than 15 times the minimum.

Article 14 goes further to set “maximum wages in civil service positions with exemptions regulated by law.”

WORKERS & FARMERS

Although liberal political forces within the Constituent Assembly had sought to cancel longstanding quotas for Egypt's toiling masses, the new constitution retains quotas for workers and farmers on the administrative boards of companies, and in both houses of parliament, via Articles 27 and 229, respectively.

The wording of the constitution, Abbas claims, “makes it seem as if they are safeguarding and upholding labor rights by keeping the 50 percent workers’ and farmers’ quota [in parliament].”

However, he argues, this provision will likely be implemented for only one, five-year term, and then abandoned via parliamentary laws regulating these elections.

According to Shokr, worker and farmer representatives in parliament have typically not represented their constituents, but rather the ruling regimes.

"In a few months we’ll see just how these so-called workers and farmers will endorse and issue a host of anti-labor legislation," he predicts.

FORCED LABOR

From the 1971 Constitution, the 2012 charter also inherits the controversial provision allowing for forced labor, and ironically, provides fewer guarantees against this practice.

Article 13 of the 1971 Constitution stipulated that “no work shall be enforced upon citizens, except by virtue of law and for the performance of a public service and in return for a fair remuneration.” In the new Constitution, Article 63 removes “for fair remuneration” to merely stipulate: “There shall be no forced labor except in accordance with law.”

Though Egypt ratified ILO Conventions Nos. 29 and 105, concerning forced labor and the abolition of forced labor, in the 1950s, it has failed to legally uphold their provisions and is now seen to be enshrining this universally criminalized act.

CHILD LABOR

Meanwhile, the Constitution is even more controversial for enshrining child labor, especially since there was no provision in the 1971 version allowing for this form of labor.

Article 70 of the new Constitution says, “Child labor is prohibited before passing the age of compulsory education, in jobs that are not fit for a child’s age, or that prevent the child from continuing education.”

Shokr says the phrasing on this particular issue “makes it seem like child labor is acceptable and only needs to be regulated.”

“Child labor is a crime which deprives children of their educational opportunities, playtime, and friends; and also denies them their childhoods,” he says, adding that the state should be ashamed and should work to abolish both child and forced labor.

These articles also contravene the ILO’s conventions 182 on the worst forms of child labor, Egypt ratified by Egypt in 2002; and 138 on the minimum age, ratified in 1999 and setting the minimum age for legal child labor at 15.

MILITARY TRIBUNALS

The contentious practice of trying citizens before military courts is now delineated in the Constitution under Article 198 “for crimes that harm the armed forces.”

Heba Morayef, director of Human Rights Watch in Egypt, says the wording “may allow for the referral of workers to military courts, for example, if they strike at one of the armed forces’ pasta factories.”

The article is all the more worrisome considering estimates that place the armed forces’ control of Egypt’s economy anywhere between 20-40 percent, in varied sectors employing hundreds of thousands nationwide.

Already, a number of citizens have been referred to military tribunals, including freelance journalist Mohamed Sabry, who is facing charges of entering a prohibited military zone and filming an army facility.

*Photo courtesy of Tabitha Ross

Egypt: Child labor still rampant in workshops & fields

Associated Press
In workshops, fields, Egyptian children at work

October 30, 2012

KHALIL HAMRA

CAIRO (AP) — It’s early in the morning, and 13-year-old Ezzat is hard at work in one of Cairo’s pottery workshops in an ancient part of the Egyptian capital. He sorts through the day’s production. In the same area of workshops, three barefoot boys under the age of 12 carry clay pieces from inside the factory out into the sun to dry.

‘‘I go to school, but I decided not to go today because it is time to paint the clay,’’ said Ezzat, whose brother runs the workshop. Ezzat refused to give his last name.

The Egyptian government estimates that some 1.6 million minors work — almost 10 percent of population aged 17 or under — often in arduous conditions. Other experts put the number at nearly twice that, given that so many work in informal sectors and are difficult to track.

In 2011, a U.S. Department of Labor report said Egypt had made some efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor, but it said the country has not addressed gaps in legal enforcement to protect children.

Some child labor activists worry that protections for children could be loosened further under the new constitution still being written. Earlier this month, the Egyptian Coalition for Children’s Rights warned that early drafts of the document did not include as firm prohibitions on child labor as past constitutions.

In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, famous as the epicenter of the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s one-party rule, children can be seen selling flags, popcorn and tea whenever a demonstration draws a crowd. On calmer days when traffic is flowing through the square boys will try and wipe the city’s dust off the cars stuck in traffic to earn a few coins.

Young boys can be found in the more upmarket neighborhoods of Cairo flogging a dozen and a half fresh roses for 10 Egyptian pounds, about $1.6.

A young boy is almost never missing from an Egyptian mechanic’s workshop. Usually covered in grease and grime they fetch the tools, get the dirtiest work and are often physically abused with little or no recourse.

A short drive out of Cairo and all along the vast Nile valley children can be found working in the fields as hired farmhands or on family plots. Brick factories along the Nile also employ children who often endure extreme physical exertion in hot weather.


*Photo courtesy of AP/Khalil Hamra

Egypt's growing number of street children need help

The Egyptian Gazette
Egypt's street children in need of help

Monday, February 27, 2012

Alaa Koddous


CAIRO - In a crowd, it's difficult to spot the little street children, but they are there, and their numbers are growing.

Ziko Reda, a 15-year-old street child, spends all day in the street rather than going to school, in order to earn some money for his family.

"I don’t want to go to school and I'm not interested in education," says Reda, whose clothes are torn and filthy. "School doesn’t bring me money,” says Reda, not realising that it is not a matter of what one earns but how the money is earned.

Reda, who cleans cars stuck in traffic jams in Nasr City, adds that money, not education, buys everything you need in life, explaining that his father and mother are divorced and he has to earn money for his mother, and his younger brother and sister.

"I'm responsible for my family. I have to bring home at least LE150 ($24.85) per day," he stresses, while scanning the traffic for cars to clean.

Reda works for 15 hours per day, only eats one fuul (broad bean) or taa'miya sandwich during all that time; he must then return home with dinner for his family.

"I wake up every day at 6:00am and begin my work at 7:00. I return home again at 10pm with everything my family needs and give my mother whatever money’s left over.

"In the early morning there are thousands of motorists going to work, so I can make some nice money. In the afternoon they come back home, so I can make more money; in the interval, I rest for one hour and eat my sandwich," he adds.

Reda is convinced that all he wants in life is to make money by whatever means.

Government studies of 2007 and 2009 concluded that there were 10,000 street children in Egypt, although, according to the world Health Organisation, there are really more than 1 million.

Many street children have escaped from abusive homes or left rural areas looking for work in the city. Once on the street, they work collecting rubbish, begging, cleaning and directing cars into parking spaces, in order to live.

According to experts, these street children are like 'clay' that can easily be worked and exploited in many harmful ways.

"The Education Ministry is responsible for this problem," Gamal el-Arabi, the Education Minister said at a workshop, which discussed sending street children to special schools, with the aim of their being reintegrated into society.

"We cannot ignore this problem, which has become worse since the revolution," he asserted. The street children are very prone to violence, with 86 per cent of them describing this as a regular issue, while 50 per cent have been raped, according to a UNICEF study of 2000.

Many thugs and other unsavoury characters pay street children to commit crimes. Street children have been blamed for many of the unpleasant incidents that have happened recently, prompting Hani Helal, the head of the Egyptian Association for Children’s Rights, to refuse to celebrate the National Day for Street Children’s Rights this year.

"More than 160 of these children were made scapegoats for the Mohamed Mahmoud Street, Qasr Al-Aini and Port Said Stadium incidents, where almost 200 lives were claimed in violent clashes," he says.

“The police must stop arresting them in groups, while those in prison must immediately be set free.”

The Association says that the police torture street children, to make them confess to crimes they haven’t committed.

"Street children are well organised," comments Ahmed Hamdi, a downtown shop owner. "Every morning, they meet near my shop and agree where they’re going to work in the vicinity that day; they then meet again in the same place at the end of the day.”

Many street children are just tools in the hands of criminals, who exploit their need for money to perform illegal acts.

"These street children are hired by criminals to beg in the streets," says Um Mohamed, a downtown tissue seller. "They pay the child’s family LE25 ($4.14) to beg in the streets for them," she adds sadly.

Attempts to unionize one of Egypt's most dangerous professions

Egypt Independent
In the dangerous profession of brick-making, talk of organizing

February 13, 2012

Jano Charbel



About 1 million workers employed in Egypt’s brick-manufacturing industry face constant threats of unemployment, exploitation, serious injury, illness and even death. This informal-sector industry relies exclusively on temporary and seasonally employed laborers who have no unions or insurance policies to protect their interests.

But some advocates hope that will change soon.

A conference last weekend organized by the Italian development organization COSPE and a number of Egyptian civil society organizations highlighted the plight of these manual laborers, promoted fair and safe working conditions, and helped them unionize their ranks. Representatives of the brick workers, along with trade union federations, labor lawyers, NGOs and employers, participated in this conference. Although the organization invited governmental authorities, none attended.

The conference focused on the neighborhoods of Saff and Desamy, which have the highest concentrations of red brick manufacturing nationwide. About a thousand red brick factories and workshops are located in this area of southeastern Cairo, and they employ more than 200,000 workers.

“There are no real job opportunities in Saff except for brick-making,” said Reda Abdel Latif, a worker. “In these factories, we are subjected to life-threatening injuries, which often lead to limb amputations.”

Abdel Latif said that “workers in this back-breaking industry toil under the scorching heat of the sun and brick furnaces, and exposure to near-freezing temperatures at night.”

Another brick worker from Saff, Hany Atta, said rampant child labor in the industry means that thousands of children are deprived of their educations.

“They risk their lives and sacrifice their schooling in order to financially assist their families,” Atta said.

He said workers are frequently debilitated in workplace and transport accidents, and are thus “put out of service, or rendered jobless for the remainder of their lives.”

Atta said nearly all brick workers suffer from burns, back injuries and respiratory illnesses associated with inhaling burning diesel and furnace fumes. On average, workers toil for eight to 15 hours per day in these factories.

“In comparison to other forms of manual labor, we are able to generate a decent amount of income from these factories. Yet this comes at the expense of our health. It’s the kind of work that cuts your life short,” Atta said.

Abdel Azim Younis, a brick worker from Desamy, said that while these factories provide money for their workers, there is no job stability, no contracts, no unions, no health insurance and no pensions. Younis added that because they burn diesel and rarely use filters in their chimneys, these factories produce tremendous amounts of pollution, which harms the environment as well as the health of workers and nearby residents.

“We brick workers are expendable capital in the eyes of the employers. If one of us dies, or is injured and unable to work, there are thousands of other workers waiting in line to take our jobs,” Younis explained. “Our production is vital to the building, construction, housing and real estate industries, yet we have no rights.”

Another worker from Desamy, Shaaban Saeed, said that “on average, a brick worker is employed in this industry only until the age of 40 or 45. His body breaks down shortly after this age, and he is no longer able to work in this industry or in any other manual labor for the rest of his short life.” Saeed argued that brick workers receive very low wages in light of their physically draining labor.

Saeed, Younis, Atta and Abdel Latif, along with a host of other brick workers, agreed on the necessity of establishing labor unions in these factories with the goal of improving working conditions, decreasing working hours and/or increasing wages, along with providing workers with contracts, health insurance and pensions.

Intisar Badr, an NGO coordinator involved with the Defending Workers’ Rights initiative, said in terms of environmental and safety standards, the brick-manufacturing industry has not developed and working conditions have not improved in decades. A small minority of these factories have moved to using natural gas instead of diesel, while a few others have installed filters in their chimneys.

“There is stringent resistance from employers regarding workers’ attempts to unionize or organize themselves,” Badr said.

Despite the rise of independent trade unionism since the January 25 revolution, a number of NGO representatives said employers are likely to fire workers who attempt to organize within these brick factories.

Factory owner Qadry Mohamed, who attended the conference, said he sympathized with his workers because they have many grievances.

“I would like to establish an insurance policy for my workers so that they have a safety net to fall on in case they are injured,” Mohamed said.

But he expressed reluctance of establishing a workers’ union within his factory.

“We understand and support the workers’ demands, but the workers also have to understand that such organizations would pressure us beyond our means,” Mohamed said.

Mohamed said the factory is barely making a profit because of rising diesel prices and other expenses, and that such pressure could force the company to shut down or sell off its factories. He pays each worker LE50 for a full day, which averages 10 hours, he said.

Labor lawyer Malek Adly described attempts to unionize brick workers as “a steep uphill struggle, especially if their struggle lacks legal and media support.”

“There is no enforcement of labor legislation with which to protect workers’ rights in the informal sector of the economy,” Adly said.

The lawyer said this roundtable conference was unlikely to lead immediately to the establishment of any unions in these factories, “but it can serve to raise awareness, and to produce labor leaders who could then lead this struggle.”


*Photo courtesy of Ahmed el-Gamal

Street Children find safe place to learn in Tahrir Square

DAILY NEWS EGYPT
Street Children find a safe place to learn in Tahrir Square

July 20, 2011

The Origins of Labor Day

Industrial Workers of the World
The Brief Origins of May Day

Eric Chase

Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.

At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit. Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.

A variety of socialist organizations sprung up throughout the later half of the 19th century, ranging from political parties to choir groups. In fact, many socialists were elected into governmental office by their constituency. But again, many of these socialists were ham-strung by the political process which was so evidently controlled by big business and the bi-partisan political machine. Tens of thousands of socialists broke ranks from their parties, rebuffed the entire political process, which was seen as nothing more than protection for the wealthy, and created anarchist groups throughout the country. Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures (including government), emphasized worker controlled industry, and valued direct action over the bureaucratic political process. It is inaccurate to say that labor unions were "taken over" by anarchists and socialists, but rather anarchists and socialist made up the labor unions.

At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations. At first, most radicals and anarchists regarded this demand as too reformist, failing to strike "at the root of the evil." A year before the Haymarket Massacre, Samuel Fielden pointed out in the anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, that "whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave."

Despite the misgivings of many of the anarchists, an estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that "the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction." With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.

In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:

* Workingmen to Arms!
* War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.
* The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.
* One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!
* MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.

Not surprisingly the entire city was prepared for mass bloodshed, reminiscent of the railroad strike a decade earlier when police and soldiers gunned down hundreds of striking workers. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the epicenter for the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike with the anarchists in the forefront of the public's eye. With their fiery speeches and revolutionary ideology of direct action, anarchists and anarchism became respected and embraced by the working people and despised by the capitalists.

The names of many - Albert Parsons, Johann Most, August Spies and Louis Lingg - became household words in Chicago and throughout the country. Parades, bands and tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets exemplified the workers' strength and unity, yet didn't become violent as the newspapers and authorities predicted.

More and more workers continued to walk off their jobs until the numbers swelled to nearly 100,000, yet peace prevailed. It was not until two days later, May 3, 1886, that violence broke out at the McCormick Reaper Works between police and strikers.

For six months, armed Pinkerton agents and the police harassed and beat locked-out steelworkers as they picketed. Most of these workers belonged to the "anarchist-dominated" Metal Workers' Union. During a speech near the McCormick plant, some two hundred demonstrators joined the steelworkers on the picket line. Beatings with police clubs escalated into rock throwing by the strikers which the police responded to with gunfire. At least two strikers were killed and an unknown number were wounded.

Full of rage, a public meeting was called by some of the anarchists for the following day in Haymarket Square to discuss the police brutality. Due to bad weather and short notice, only about 3000 of the tens of thousands of people showed up from the day before. This affair included families with children and the mayor of Chicago himself. Later, the mayor would testify that the crowd remained calm and orderly and that speaker August Spies made "no suggestion... for immediate use of force or violence toward any person..."

As the speech wound down, two detectives rushed to the main body of police, reporting that a speaker was using inflammatory language, inciting the police to march on the speakers' wagon. As the police began to disperse the already thinning crowd, a bomb was thrown into the police ranks. No one knows who threw the bomb, but speculations varied from blaming any one of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur working for the police.

Enraged, the police fired into the crowd. The exact number of civilians killed or wounded was never determined, but an estimated seven or eight civilians died, and up to forty were wounded. One officer died immediately and another seven died in the following weeks. Later evidence indicated that only one of the police deaths could be attributed to the bomb and that all the other police fatalities had or could have had been due to their own indiscriminate gun fire. Aside from the bomb thrower, who was never identified, it was the police, not the anarchists, who perpetrated the violence.

Eight anarchists - Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg - were arrested and convicted of murder, though only three were even present at Haymarket and those three were in full view of all when the bombing occurred. The jury in their trial was comprised of business leaders in a gross mockery of justice similar to the Sacco-Vanzetti case thirty years later, or the trials of AIM and Black Panther members in the seventies. The entire world watched as these eight organizers were convicted, not for their actions, of which all of were innocent, but for their political and social beliefs. On November 11, 1887, after many failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fisher were hung to death. Louis Lingg, in his final protest of the state's claim of authority and punishment, took his own life the night before with an explosive device in his mouth.

The remaining organizers, Fielden, Neebe and Schwab, were pardoned six years later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice. Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, big business and government conducted what some say was the very first "Red Scare" in this country. Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American. The common image of an anarchist became a bearded, eastern European immigrant with a bomb in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Today we see tens of thousands of activists embracing the ideals of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who established May Day as an International Workers' Day. Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by establishing "Law and Order Day" on May 1. We can draw many parallels between the events of 1886 and today. We still have locked out steelworkers struggling for justice. We still have voices of freedom behind bars as in the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier. We still had the ability to mobilize tens of thousands of people in the streets of a major city to proclaim "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" at the WTO and FTAA demonstrations.

Words stronger than any I could write are engraved on the Haymarket Monument:

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR SILENCE WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE VOICES YOU ARE THROTTLING TODAY.

Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.

Child Labor within Egypt's Fishing Industry

Al-Masry Al-Youm
Thursday 27, August 2009
Children on the water

Hundreds of thousands of underage fishermen face harsh lives
By Jano Charbel

BORG MEGHEIZAL---Twelve year-old Deif Allah Ragab works on a diesel-powered winch at one of the maintenance dockyards. Operating the loud, smoky and greasy machinery he pulls a large wooden fishing boat while four (equally young) co-workers place wooden sledges and planks underneath it as it comes ashore. After turning off the winch, Ragab said “I used to go to school until I was ten, but school is expensive and I don’t like it." He added “I prefer to work here, I have friends here and I can make money here."

In addition to operating the winch Ragab scrubs and cleans the hulls of fishing boats, and is an assistant carpenter on the docks. He works from 9am-5pm six days a week, and gets paid LE10 (less than $US 2) per day.

Mohamed Hassan, 13, works at the same dockyard but only during the summer months when he is on vacation from school. He helps lodge boats in place, and assists in the painting and carpentry of boats. He earns the same daily rate that Ragab does. Hassan said “I work here during vacations, but I go to school the rest of the year. I want to be an engineer."

At another dockyard nearby 11-year-old Saeed El Kawi sits next to his father on a wooden bench outside a ship-building workshop. He has embarked on three fishing trips so far this year. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, the boy immediately replied “fisherman." But his father Saeed Senior said “I really hope he doesn’t become a fisherman. I started to work on these boats when I was 12, and I know from experience that it is a tough job."

An estimated 450,000 child laborers are employed in Egypt’s fishing industry nationwide where they are exposed to numerous occupational hazards and are denied their educational opportunities. Child labor within the fishing industry is said to be rampant along Egypt’s 2,500 kilometers of coastlines, as well as along the Nile and on Lakes Nasser and Qaroun.

Abed Hamdy, a field researcher at the Land Center for Human Rights and specialist in the labor affairs of fishing communities said child labor is common to all Egypt’s coastal governorates. But it is most pronounced in the Governorates of Port Said, in Fayyoum on Lake Qaroun, and especially in Rashid (Rosetta) in Beheira Governorate, and the town of Borg Megheizal in Kafr el-Sheikh Governorate.

In Borg Megheizal, child labor is omnipresent; children are employed at coffee shops, bakeries, and grain mills while others drive auto-rickshaws (tok-toks.) Yet the majority of child laborers are found on fishing boats, loading catches and then unloading them on shore, or as helping hands in the docking, building and maintenance of boats.

Residents here estimate that around 50 per cent of the town’s children are employed in the fishing industry. Local resident Ashraf Ali, an ex-fisherman, said that number may have been around 90 per cent two or three decades earlier. “Back then all the men and boys in this town where working at sea, while all the girls and women worked in their homes," he said.

Saeed Al Kawi Senior said the work conditions are tough for fishermen of any age. The boats may be out at sea for a week or two weeks at a time, and the large fishing trawlers may be out for even longer. “Each time it takes you away from your family, wife and children," he said. “I would like my son to complete his education and choose any other profession."

Another resident, who didn’t give his name, said that the impoverished villagers have little choice other than a life on the boats. “There are no other professions to employ people here. Unemployment rates are high and the government has neglected us and there are practically no development projects," he said. “What difference does it make if you complete your education or not? Even if you do, where are you going to find work here except at sea?"

In addition to the harsh condition, Hamdy, the labor researcher, said the underage fishermen “are subjected to the worst forms of exploitation, and are frequently injured by machinery and moving mechanical devices on board these boats."

At sea these child laborers are exposed to the harmful rays of the sun, harsh weather and humidity; all of which detrimentally affect their health and wellbeing. Children are subjected to falling overboard and drowning, some boats sink or capsize while out at sea jeopardizing the lives of fishermen, and especially the children amongst them.

“Fishermen employ child laborers because they get paid less, are more obedient and are easier to boss around than grownups. These child laborers are frequently bullied and physically abused," Hamdy said. “Alarmingly, we have also received numerous reports of sexual harassment and molestation of these children at the hands of fishermen. Along Egypt’s north coast some trafficking networks are also smuggling children via fishing boats to Italy and Greece where, more often than not, they are forced to work for criminal gangs and mafias."

There are no reliable statistics available as to the number of underage fishermen in Egypt. However, studies indicate that approximately 15 per cent of Egypt's three million child laborers are employed in fishing. "We are talking here about hundreds of thousands of children who are missing out on their educations, many of whom are put on fishing boats as soon as they are able to be utilized as helping hands," concluded Hamdy.

Most Egyptian child laborers, an estimated 60 per cent of the total, are employed in agriculture. Egypt has frequently faced criticism for not doing enough to curb its child labor rates—most recently at the annual conference of the International Labor Organization in Geneva in June 2009.

The Dissenting Voices of Egyptian Quarry Workers & Owners

AlMasryOnline.Com
Tuesday 21 July 2009
Chaos among the quarries

El Minya is bracing itself for a second round of violent clashes over a new government taxation system
By Jano Charbel

El-Minya- On the city’s eastern banks, dozens of workers wait idly by the side of roads in anticipation of job offers in the quarries. Empty trucks and lorries drive uphill towards the quarries, while others drive downhill loaded with stone blocks and dust-covered workers.

A July 16 protest here over a new system of government tax attracted an estimated 4,000 angry quarry workers. When Central Security Forces moved in to physically disperse the protesters, the ensuing conflict left one police conscript dead and a dozen more injured; more than 50 protestors were arrested and at least 20 more were treated for tear gas inhalation.

Meanwhile, the quarry owners and workers have returned to their workplaces.

Among the white cliffs that house the estimated 800 local quarries, business-as-usual seems to have resumed. Machine operators saw into the earth and cut out rows of blocks producing immense clouds of dust in the process; close-by a team of workers dislodge these blocks and toss them to their coworkers who line and stack them in the backs of trucks. Very few of these workers wear protective masks or goggles, although most do cover their faces with scarves and some wear sunglasses.

But a climate of fear and suspicion reigns at all levels. All workers and quarry owners interviewed for this article refused to give their names or chose pseudonyms to protect against government reprisal.

Under the protection of anonymity, the workers bitterly vented against what they see as a callous and out-of-touch government decision that will directly affect their livelihoods. The average quarry worker, they say, can make up to LE 50 per day, while a machine operator can make up to LE 120.

“The governor is a police-officer-thug, he forcefully wants to take our money that we work so hard to make" said one man. Another anonymous worker said, “The governor sits in his air-conditioned office and never comes to inspect our workplaces in these hills; he knows nothing about our working conditions." Yet another shouted, “Does he think we are working in a gold-quarry or what?"

A local activist said the harsh working conditions in the quarries have honed the workers’ feelings of bitterness and set the stage for this month’s explosion when the new tariff system was announced.

“Quarrying is an extremely hazardous occupation. Nearly 100 workers die as a result of industrial accidents each year in these hills. Several hundred more are injured, maimed by saws and razors, while others are crushed in rockslides," he said.

One 19-year-old quarry worker lifted up his galabiya to display the long scar running down his left leg.

“A saw broke off one of the machines and cut my leg open two years ago, I nearly bled to death," he said.

Even for those who escape serious injury, the harsh lifestyle of a quarry worker takes its toll.

“By thirty or forty years old the worker is physically worn-out," one man said. “You won’t find any worker in the quarries who is 50 years old. Only quarry owners reach that age."

A co-owner of a local quarry, asking that his name not be published, said the government is trying to tax the operations without providing the social and health care services that the taxes are supposed to fund.

“If the governorate provided our workers with clinics, hospitals or medical assistance then they would be willing to pay for these services," he said. “But what has the government given us? Nothing at all. They don’t give, they only take."

The owners warned that Minya could witness a second explosion of workers’ anger if the situation isn’t resolved by August 1, when the new taxation system is schedule to take effect.

The dispute began earlier this summer when Minya Governor Ahmed Diaa el-Dein ordered a change in the government’s system of taxing the hundreds of stone quarries that dot the city’s eastern hills. El-Dein decreed that instead of collecting an annual rent on the quarries, plus the annual social insurance payments, the only charges imposed would be the charge of 1 piaster upon every brick-sized block of stone produced, plus another piaster for each block that is transported within the governorate, and two piasters for each block being transported outside the governorate.

In a statement issued by the governor’s office, el-Dein said the change amounted to a mere adjustment in accounting procedures—one he discussed beforehand with several local quarry owners.

“We were surprised when we later found that quarry owners were objecting," el-Dein’s statement said.

But one local workers’ rights activist (who asked to keep both their name and that of their independent organization undisclosed) explained that the changes actually amounted to a massive new tax on quarry operations. The reason: only about 350 of the larger quarries were ever registered with the government and paid the annual rent fees or social insurance fees. Another 450 or so smaller quarries were unlicensed and never paid anything, the activist said.

“To an outsider, the governor’s decree would seem like a service to the quarry owners in its elimination of the burden of rent, but in reality most of the quarry owners and workers weren’t paying rent or social insurance," the activist said. “When you calculate it, you’ll find that this new system will generate at least another LE 10 million per year for the Governorate’s coffers."

Most local quarry owners, large and small, shut down their operations in protest at the beginning of July while they attempted to negotiate with the Governorate. But by July 16, workers left without an income source grew impatient and began marching and demonstrating, the local activist said.

The aftermath of the July 16 protest has left parts of Minya on security lockdown. Most quarry owners and workers have resumed operations, while the governorate conducts negotiations with the owners and the relatively small local quarry workers’ trade union. El-Dein postponed implementation of his new taxation decree until August 1 and has discussed plans to create an LE 5 million fund for compensating workplace injuries and deaths, along with the immediate construction of a medical center and a mobile hospital unit.

Forty three protestors remain under arrest despite a court ruling ordering their release. Prosecutors have filed charges including participating in an illegal demonstration, assault and injury of law enforcement officials, accidental murder, blocking-off roads and obstructing traffic.

Now a relative calm has settled on Minya, backed by a massive deployment of security forces and paddy wagons. Meanwhile all sides are trying to understand and explain the decisions and social circumstances that led to such a violent confrontation in this rural city about 240 kilometers south of Cairo.

“The ball is in (the government’s) playing field now," he said.

Meanwhile the local activist said that the entire conflict has already produced one interesting side effect—an unlikely unified front against the government.

“This is the first time that both the quarry workers and the owners are united in their grievances."




See also: Al Masry Al Youm Online - 43 miners in police custody following riots

Child Labor in Egypt

Almasryonline.com

The toil of the young
Thursday 18, June 2009

What is so difficult about upholding minimum age requirements for labor? Jano Charbel investigates

“I wanted to be an actor, but I know that it is not going to happen," said 13 year old Mahmoud Salah who sells ice cold tamarind, liquorish, and carob juice from shiny cylindrical containers in the massive shantytown of Mansheyet Nasser, one of Cairo’s largest informal housing quarters. He said “I go to school and have just finished my exams; I work on this cart with my maternal uncle in summer." Donning a cap, the heat of this seasonal employment didn’t seem to bother Salah, “we work from 10 in the morning all the way till 12 at night; my maternal uncle works the night shift"

Salah has not heard of the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) annual conference that taking place from June 3-19 in Geneva, where the Egyptian government is being subjected to criticism over its failure to implement Convention number 138 Concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment – which stipulates that children under the age of 14 years are not be employed, or forced to work. The ILO committee has called on Egypt to double its efforts for the eradication of child labor.

Children under that age of 15 constitute around one-third of Egypt’s population, 10 per cent of these children, between the ages of five and 14, are forced into one form of work or another. The minimum age for child labor permissible by Egyptian law is 14 years. According to statistics issued in 2008 by the United Nation’s agency for children UNICEF: there are an estimated two million and 700 thousand children who are forced to work and toil in Egypt, often in difficult conditions.

The Director of the non-governmental Egyptian Center for Children’s Rights Hany Helal disagrees with UNICEF’s statistics, however. “These numbers are in no way accurate. Other recent statistics compiled by independent NGOs indicate that there are over 4.5 million child laborers in Egypt; while studies issued by social researchers at the American University in Cairo indicate the number may be as high as 5.5 million. There is no way to know for sure, unless more accurate demographic surveys are conducted in each of Egypt’s governorates."

If civil society estimates are correct then 17 per cent to 20 per cent of Egyptian children may actually be child laborers. Meanwhile the lowest of all estimates regarding the number of child laborers are those provided by the Egyptian government – as late as 2008 the government was claiming that only three percent of minors are engaged in child labor, and only seasonally. Officials and spokespersons from the Labor Ministry could not be reached for questions regarding these statistics, updates on the actual number of child laborers in the country, or their child labor inspection efforts.

In any case both Helal and UNICEF are in agreement that poverty is the main driving force behind child labor in Egypt. According to UN statistics 20% of Egyptians live below the poverty line, while another 20% lives just above this level. Helal indicated that the global financial crisis may push additional minors into child labor, and offset governmental programs aimed at addressing this problem.

Just look closely: countless numbers of young children work as helping hands with mechanics, as assistants in electrical workshops; numerous others are found peddling napkins, flowers, and/or begging at traffic lights, while others work at markets, stores, and at dry cleaners where they provide door-to-door delivery services. Elsewhere there are little boys who sit perched in tiny corners by the sliding doors of microbuses as they call out destinations and collect fares from passengers. Outside a metro station in the populous working class district of Shobra El Kheima a distraught mother displayed a photograph of her child to a group of auto-rickshaw drivers and cried out: “Has anybody seen my son Tareq Mohammad? He is skipping school in order to make some extra pocket money by driving a rickshow owned by an immoral and opportunistic man."

“The majority of child laborers are employed in the informal sectors of the economy, such as small workshops, unofficial services, and family-owned projects " said Helal. “In any case child labor has a direct and negative impact upon these children’s levels of literacy, educations, health, safety, wellbeing and life expectancies. Child labor also directly affects families and the state, for it imposes additional burdens on households and state budgets - in terms of increased medical expenditures, decreased levels of education, and lower professional skills amongst the national workforce. I don’t believe that there is any form of child labor which may really be classified as being beneficial or constructive. For any and all forms of child labor involve a denial of educational opportunities, playtime, rest-time, and a general deprivation of childhood activities."

Elsewhere in this sprawling shantytown there is a marble and granite workshop where 11 year old Mustafa Abdel Nasser works. He pushes a wheel barrel laden with fragments of marble and then dumps them into the back of a pickup truck below. With sweat and white dust on his face and arms he said “we’ve ended it ", in reference to his schooling/education. He put down his wheel barrel and added “my father wanted me to complete my education, but I didn’t want to because I don’t like school; and then I also need to make money – for myself and for my family." When asked how much his employer pays him per month, Nasser picked up the wheel barrel from its handlebars and hastily pushed on forth. In any case “the average wage, or earnings, for the typical local resident of Mansheyet Nasser is LE150 or LE 200 per month " (around $US 27-$US 36) according to Manal El Tibi, the Director of the Egyptian Center for Housing Rights. Child laborers or helping hands are usually paid significantly less.

Egypt has often been subjected to criticism at annual ILO conferences for its inability to limit the phenomenon of child labor. The Egyptian State has, in fact, ratified the key international conventions addressing child labor, including both the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1982, in addition to the UN’s International Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, along with the ILO’s Convention number 138 (Concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment) in 1999, and Convention number 182 (Concerning Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention) in 2002. Yet as a state party to all these conventions, Egypt has an obligation to implement and enforce its national child labor legislation in compliance with these international standards. Upholding these provisions has been easier said than done.

According to Labor Analyst, Saber Barakat, of the independent Hisham Mubarak Law Center “the main responsibility for child labor rests with the Ministry of Manpower & Migration, which has now become only the Ministry of Migration as it perceives that it can resolve all of Egypt’s labor problems by sending our workers off to labor in neighboring countries. The ministry is repeatedly failing to uphold the provisions of Convention number 138, and its inspectors seem to be oblivious to the widespread phenomenon of child labor across the country. "

Barakat added that “if the manufacture of Egyptian products continues to involve child labor, as is the case today, then the industrialized countries of Europe and the Americas will move to boycott Egyptian products altogether. This has happened three times already, on a small scale, over the past ten years. If the Egyptian State does not get its act together and exerts a genuine effort to enforce the provisions of Convention # 138, along with the domestic Child Law, then it may be placed on the ILO’s index of violating states. "

The labor analyst concluded by saying that “the Egyptian State ratified the Minimum Age Convention ten years ago, but hasn’t displayed its willingness to implement the provisions of this convention. If Egypt keeps neglecting its international obligations then the ILO may escalate its criticisms by filing complaints before the United Nations’ General Assembly; which may in turn file a complaint to the Security Council – which is empowered to issue warnings, recommendations to refrain from international trade with Egypt, and it may even impose trade restrictions or a comprehensive boycott. ?

According to Egypt’s contemporary legislation governing child labor – specifically Child Law 12/1996, Unified Labor Law 12/2003, and Law No. 126/2008 amending the provisions of the Child Law, the state is obliged to uphold the following provisions: All forms of labor are prohibited for children under the age of 14; vocational training and seasonal employment are not allowed for children under 12 years old; child labor shall not involve work which is hazardous to their health or growth, and must not interfere with their studies. Child laborers of legal age are to work for a maximum of six hours per day, for no more than four consecutive hours at a time; it is not permissible for children to work from the hours of 8pm-7am. Under no conditions is a child to be subjected to employment in the worst forms of child labor – prostitution, the slave trade, trafficking in children, child pornography, adult’s use of children in the commission of crimes, or use as child soldiers. The presence of these worst forms of child labor is said to negligible in Egypt. However, one of the most problematic forms of child labor in Egypt is that involving agricultural labor, especially given that the safeguards listed above are not applied to children working in this sector.

Commenting on this phenomenon, Helal said “it is generally agreed upon that 70 per cent to 80 per cent of all child laborers in Egypt are employed in agriculture. The employment of children in agriculture is perhaps the most the strenuous and detrimental form of child labor, because these children toil from sunrise to sunset under the harmful rays of the sun; plus they are brought in close contact with chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers without protective masks or goggles; there’s also the dust and other airborne particles, and the hazardous risks associated with agricultural machinery. Amongst the other most detrimental industries in which children are forced to work are stone quarries, foundries, smelters, cotton gins, mechanical workshops and glass-manufacturing workshops. "

“It is in the informal sectors where child labor is most prevalent, especially in the so-called stairwell industries which may involve the collection of plastic, paper, and glass for recycling, bottling, etc. Similarly there are stairwell workshops in El Fayoum which manufacture firecrackers and which employ large numbers of poorly paid child laborers. Workplace inspectors from the Labor Ministry tend to overlook these dangerous conditions despite the fact that there are thousands of these workshops across the country. " Helal added that “most of the large companies, factories, and industries here in Egypt, whether they are public or private sector enterprises, do not resort to the employment of child laborers. "

So what is needed to eradicate, or at least diminish, the phenomenon of child labor in Egypt? Helal believes that “a nationwide awareness campaign detailing the dangers and detriments of child labor is urgently required. A change in laws is also needed, especially amendments to the unified labor law, health insurance law, and workplace injuries law. Plus a general change in Egypt’s economic conditions whereby families would no longer need to resort to the use of child labor. "

According to Barakat the Egyptian State is not doing what it should be doing. He said that it “can start by promoting social development, improving its schools’ educational standards, and upgrading its public health care services. Saber added that “Egypt’s poor public educational system is characterized by ill-equipped schools and incompetent teachers, along with a lack of adequate learning facilities and playgrounds. If these conditions are improved then children shall have a real incentive to complete their schooling, without having to resort to child labor. " He went on to say that “declining real wages tend to push working men away from poorly-paid jobs and to push women and children, who are typically paid lower wages, into replacing them in these same jobs. The state should focus on raising wages, curtailing unemployment, and improving working conditions so as to keep adults in the labor market, and to keep children out of it.

In January 2006 the NCCW launched its “National Strategy for the Elimination of Child Labor, " and during this same month, First Lady Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak launched a campaign in coordination with the ILO known as the “Red Card to Child Labor. " Whether or not these campaigns will have any real impact on child labor is yet to be gauged. The World Day Against Child Labor is commemorated each year on June 12.

http://www.almasryonline.com/portal/page/portal/MasryPortal/ARTICLE_EN?itId=UG92273&pId=UG14&pType=1