After cancellation of the Suez Conference, Center for Trade Union and Workers' Services is hosting the meeting in solidarity with IFFCO workers

Press Releases
Tuesday, January 31, 2017 - 12:36

Committee for the Defense of Trade Union Freedoms and labor rights
On Friday the 27th of January at six o’clock in the evening the Center for Trade Union and Workers' Services hosted, at its headquarters in Cairo, a meeting in solidarity with the workers of the IFFCO Company. The meeting was supposed to have been held in the city of Suez. The meeting was upon the invitation of the campaign to defend trade union freedoms and labor rights after the original meeting was canceled for what may be considered "security considerations".

In this meeting representatives of the IFFCO workers met with figures from unions and political parties who were expressing solidarity with them and in the presence of a number of journalists interested in this issue. Kamal Abbas welcomed the attendees at the headquarters of CTUWS then handed over the moderation of the meeting to veteran IFFCO unionist Yousry Hafez.

Struggling with emotions, Hafez started relaying the events which IFFCO had witnessed during the last month when security forces stormed the factory at dawn on the second of January. He expressed shock at the bias of the state towards the Indian investor and against the workers.

IFFCO workers attending gave their testimonies about the injustice they suffered. Speakers included Mohammed Saeed, head of the union of IFFCO employees, who gave a summary of the struggle of IFFCO workers to form a union, a report on the work of the union and its role to the targeting of the union as the company management abused the current crisis in order to dismantle the union. Finally, Ahmed Bakr spoke about the economic situation of the IFFCO Company.


The following points are the highlights of their testimonies of IFFCO workers - not mixed with the deep bitterness they expressed:

  All the IFFCO Company workers asked for was a more fair distribution of the amount dedicated as a social bonus to absorb some of the effects of unprecedented increase in prices which is not a secret matter and is recorded in the registrar of the Labor Office. The Managing Director of the company is directly responsible for how matters ended. He first gathered workers on 26 December and informed them the amount allocated by the overseas management will be distributed to the workers excluding managers and senior staff. He secondly surprised workers by deducting the bonuses of managers from the amount appropriated, leading to the devaluation of the premiums of workers. He then refusal to negotiate or amend the rules of calculating the premium.

  It was natural that this would lead to the frustration of workers and provoking their outrage. They took an immediate response to start a sit-in and strike. The union could not discourage them or stop the protest. Nevertheless the union was under tremendous pressure: Its head was summoned by the National Security and detained for a few hours when he witnessed degrading treatment and he was threatened in order to force him to break up the strike.

  The union was not able to stand in the face of the anger that erupted with no definite intention.  The security apparatus unfortunately was not able to read the spontaneous reactions of workers, or of other sectors for that matter, when their expectations were foiled or their rights directly attacked. It then exercised the maximum and harshest pressure on the union, which was faced with the intransigence of the other side represented in the managing director and the company's management who rejected amending the method of calculating social bonus.

    IFFCO workers suffered shock and a sense of anguish caused by the position of the security apparatus and the state. They see no justification for their bias towards the management of IFFCO Company against its workers. All of them, workers and union- did not expect and cannot yet understand why the state is biased against them in favor of a foreign investor?! And why take all these arbitrary actions in return for their mere request to amend the method of calculating the social bonus.
What happened exceeded all they previously experienced and imagined.  Their sit-in was brutally stormed their sit dawn of the second of January by more than fifty vehicles of the Central Security Service. Meanwhile security forces raided the homes of union members and searched for them in the houses of relatives and in-laws as if they were pursuing a terrorist group.

    With this support from the security and government, the management of the company showed unchecked retaliatory tendencies. Workers were allowed to return to work in batches. Some would be allowed to enter the factory on a certain day and others postponed till the next day until a decision would be reached in what appeared to be deliberate humiliation and intimidation of workers.
Matters ended with about twenty-six workers fired. The support by state agencies enabled the management of the company to exercise utmost arbitrariness and seize the opportunity to settle scores with trade unionists who obliged it to come unwillingly to the negotiating table and sign a collective work agreement twice in a row.

    The company's management was not satisfied with firing members of the union but included prominent members of previous boards and reserve members of the current board, activists and prominent trade unionists in the company.  With extreme cruelty it further invested the opportunity and added to the list some workers who had suffered occupational diseases as a result of their work and whom the administration want to get rid of!!

    In addition, management deducted nearly five hundred pounds from each worker alleging suffering losses because of the strike and deducting the value of the loss from the wages of the workers.

  Workers expressed intense surprise to the bias the state apparatus is showing to the management of the company and its Indian owner -who is one of the ten richest men in the Gulf (The mother company is in Sharjah). The company does all its dealings in the US dollars including transactions within Egypt, operates according to the monthly financial closure system and wires the revenues in dollars abroad [make a profit worth 17 million dollars a month]. Workers say they are working for low wages that do not match the company's economic situation, in order for the company to make profits and move it outside Egypt? So why is the state so biased towards this company? Why all the hardship they face for the sake of an investor who does not contribute to the development of their country and does not bear any share of social responsibility?

   The "independent" workers’ union of IFFCO Company is a model for active unions representing its workers. This union was the result of a long struggle by IFFCO workers for the establishment of their union. According to the head of the union it is a "third generation" as IFFCO workers have two previous attempts to create a union before the January 2011 revolution. Each time the workers are hampered by besieging rings from the government trade union organization known as the "General Union of Egyptian workers". Worker activists succeed in having a sufficient number of members join and then approach the General Union affiliated with the Governmental Federation to submit papers to join in accordance with expired Law No. 35 of 1976. The federation then contacted the company which decided to fire the founding members immediately. The second time the workers were also subjected to security persecutions.

 

After the revolution of January and the declaration of trade union freedoms, IFFCO workers dug their way to establish an independent trade union this time. They snatched the right to form it during the strike in April 2011.

The union was founded on 18 September 2011 and since then has played a prominent and influential role in the life of the company's workers where it was able to improve wages and working conditions through two collective agreements. The union was keen on holding its general assembly every year, and forming an executive board through certified democratic elections.

Rather than allow the union to express the interests of its members, the government agencies are being hostile towards it, referring members to trial and enabling the governmental "General Federation of Trade Unions workers Egypt" of squashing it claiming its illegitimacy as it is an "independent union ".

These are the testimonies of the IFFCO workers and their stories. The attendees then took the floor to express solidarity and end the meeting with the following:

 

  Following up and developing a solidarity campaign with the IFFCO workers as well as coordinating between all events and joint action among them.

It has been suggested that the campaign includes the following:

• Holding on the legitimacy of the union and its continuation using all possible means.
• Invitation to hold a press conference to address the political forces and community institutions.
• Addressing Members of Parliament to hold the government accountable for the reasons and justifications for its bias towards the management of the company and its owner.
• To send letters to executive bodies and urge them to change their biased position against the workers.
• Developing an international campaign to pressure the management of the mother IFFCO Company requesting to respect the standards and international labor conventions, retaining its hand from the union and its members, and reinstating workers to their work.
• Developing a boycott of IFFCO products at national and international levels.
• Provide legal support to workers negatively affected with regard to the right of the union to continue exercising its role, or the separation of trade unionists, workers and forcing some workers to resign or subjecting others to different forms of persecution or abuse.

 

Committee for the Defense of Trade Union Freedoms and Labor Rights

Saturday, 28 January 2017

 

 

 

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