Labor Unions Lead the Charge in Egypt

By David Macaray
Dissident Voice
February 2, 2010

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/02/labor-unions-lead-the-charge-in-egypt/

    "Egypt's labor unions deserve some credit...there
    have been more than 3,000 labor protests by Egyptian
    workers since 2004...approximately 28-percent of the
    Egyptian workforce is unionized, with the majority
    of those members employed in the public sector"

Egypt's labor unions deserve some credit.  According to a
report presented at a symposium hosted by the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, in February, 2010, there
have been more than 3,000 labor protests by Egyptian workers
since 2004.  That's an astounding number. The report
declared that this figure "[dwarfs]  Egyptian political
protests in both scale and consequence."

Arguably, the case can be made that Egypt's current
political unrest was inspired and energized by the actions
of the country's labor movement - just as the case can be
made that the massive public protests of America's union
activists provided the template for anti-war protests and
street theater during the Vietnam war.  Joel Beinin, a
Stanford University professor, referred to Egypt's labor
activism as "....the largest social movement in the Arab
world since World War II."

While there are definitely many similarities between labor
unions all around the world, it's difficult and even
counterproductive to try and compare, much less equate them.
There are simply too many cultural and political forces at
work to draw any meaningful conclusions.

For instance, the largest labor union in the world - the
ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions), with a
staggering 134 million members - isn't even a real labor
union, at least not in the sense that the UAW or Teamsters
are real unions.  There's simply too much government control
to compare it to an American or European union.

Although significant improvements in workers' rights have
been made in China - especially since 2000 - the ACFTU is
still a tool of the government.  Chinese workers are very
cautious and deliberate in how they behave.  You can sum up
labor's role in China in one sentence:  The ACFTU has as
much freedom and autonomy as the Chinese government is
willing to give it at any point in time  No more, no less.

Mexico is another example of how difficult it is to make
broad generalizations.  While some of Mexico's unions are
the toughest, boldest, most hardcore found anywhere in the
world (when these guys go on strike, they lock the doors and
occupy the premises!), others are little more than
government-run lackeys, weak and corrupt.

India probably provides the closest non-European comparison
to American unions.  India's unions (e.g., the AITUC - All-
India Trade Union Congress) are free, they're democratic,
they're rowdy, and with all the international investments
pouring into the country, they're on the ascendancy.  In
that regard, they're reminiscent of what the U.S. was like
back in the heyday of smokestack industries and organized
labor.

Also, India's labor movement has the additional virtue of
being loosely aligned with a fairly healthy Communist party,
which means that organized labor in India knows exactly
where its ideological roots lie, and doesn't have to pretend
otherwise.

Egyptian labor has its own story.  It was in 1942 that
Egypt's workers won the legal right to form unions, and in
1952 (when the monarchy was overthrown) that the government
allowed the formation of larger groups - labor federations.
Eventually the government authorized the formation of a
"national confederation of labor," which unions with a
minimum of 1,000 members could join.

Today, approximately 28-percent of the Egyptian workforce is
unionized, with the majority of those members employed in
the public sector.  (Union membership in the U.S. stands at
12.4-percent).

Despite the difficulty of making cross-cultural comparisons,
one thing is undeniably true:  union workers everywhere in
the world have the same basic concerns and priorities.
They're all trying to improve their economic lives, and they
all recognize the importance of being organized.  Indeed,
the hundreds of thousands of people clogging the streets of
Cairo show how contagious that kind of solidarity can be.

Now if we could only get 200,000 American union members to
follow Egypt's lead.  If we could get 200,000 American
workers to demonstrate publicly - say by shutting down Wall
Street on May 1 (May Day) in protest of U.S. trade policies
- we would receive full coverage on Al Jazeera.  How cool
would that be?

[David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author (It's
Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor), was a former union
rep.]

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