Attached please find with the letter a statement and legal memo about the directive issued by the prime minister's office against the independent unions. 

This directive comes in the context of the progressive procedures of the government and the governmental union against the independent unions to make away with the union freedoms.

To confront this governmental attack we have formed a wide coalition of independent unions and civil society organizations under the slogan (Together for union freedoms).

We will organize several events under this slogan. This campaign needs wide international solidarity and we hope that we will play an important role in this international solidarity for labor and union freedoms.

A letter to his Excellency the President from the Unions with regard to the periodic leaflet of the cabinet

Dear Mr. President

Regards

We were surprised with the issuance by the cabinet of a periodic leaflet directed at the ministers with instructions from your Excellency. This leaflet signed by the Secretary general of the cabinet, and a copy of which has reached several executive and media parties – with a instructions to abide by the unified directive that the cabinet specifies to unify the politics of handling financial matters related to the labour sector. It also calls for contemplating an extensive meeting that includes second and third rank officials from the ministries, establishments, governorates and companies to encourage their role during the coming period as the backbone of executive work. Moreover, the dangerous and surprising thing about what was included in the leaflet was the directives to the concerned ministries to “coordinate with the General Union for Egyptian Workers and support it in acquiring the legitimate gains for the workers to activate its role within labour circles against independent unions and instigators”!!

Despite the fact that we appreciate the intention of this coordination- as presented in the periodical- “to spot, early on, the problems and consult about their solutions through field visits to labour sites”- this surprising instruction involves the following comments that we find important to bring to the attention of your Excellency and explain the inherent dangers in it

• We refuse putting independent unions and instigators in one basket.. We assert that we do not intend to cause unrest but call for a societal dialogue in order to avoid unrest and disorder and to put all parties in our society above the abyss of such random accusations.

We also assert that labour movements do not happen except after negotiations over demands fail or after a state of despair is reached from the possibility of them being held either because of the stubbornness of the second party or because of the workers’ mistrust of their representatives. The increase of such unrest is often associated with going back on implementing decisions or promises that has previously been given. The workers of Egypt – as is the case everywhere in the world- have never needed instigators to move or strike. Strikes were always and will remain a means of pressure that imposes itself if negotiations fail. They are the flip side of the coin of the negotiation table and may be the way to it or to an increase in its fruits and gains or resuming it if it stumbles. The living conditions are the main instigator of labour movements. Moreover, no one can prevent them in the same way that no one can claim that they caused them. Reasonable management of the labour conflicts can only be achieved through drying up the wells of anger by activating societal dialogue and collective negotiations through understanding motives and real reasons and raising the value of transparency and good governance.

• Union are the workers’ organizations that express their demands and the collective negotiation that it does on their behalf for the improvement of working conditions and all the tools for pressure that it uses for the development of negotiation conditions are all factors of the labour world that the lobour movement has formulated through its great struggles stretching back into the depth of modern history. Human experience has embraced it – one way or the other- and reproduced it in several forms and structures from civil society organizations and pressure groups representing the direct interests of varying social groups and sectors and pressuring decision making centers and conducting societal negotiations with other parties.

No society does not experience a societal argument between its classes and sectors because in no society is that no conflict of interest. This argument may intensify or witness periods of relative calm where it fades. But it does not stop. That is why suffocating the channels for this argument and closing them does not end them. It only forces them to take alternative routes that may be very dangerous.

In our country when the channels of social arguments and collective negotiations shut down, society suffocated to the extent of illness. Fundamentalism and backwardness got to it as well as poverty and tight living conditions. Conflict was not avoided but it exploded in a sectarian strife and a rejection of others and an increase in crime rates and violence. Totalitarian discourse denies societal arguments based on a denial of the conflicting interest. Denying contrasts therefore only led to their increase and pretending social peace did not succeed in reining in the explosive anger.

The absence of an effective labour organization led to a difficulty and possibly an impossibility in negotiations between the different work parties. This vacuum was clearly manifested on the labour scene, this vacuum that compels Egyptian workers to use strikes to cause a start of negotiations. This vacuum cannot be filled except by unions. Real unions as created by the budding labour movement when it realized this vacuum that had to be filled around two centuries ago and as it was known and established by the Egyptians themselves before entering into the twentieth century.

The confidence crisis that is apparent to the witnesses through the vast majority of the labour incidents and the extreme difficulty in negotiating with the working party are only bitter results of the absence of labour organizations that represent workers and express their interests and that can be trusted.

Egyptian workers were able, in the aftermath of the 25 of January revolution- to usurp some of their union related freedoms stipulated in the ministerial declaration on March twelve 2011. However the practice of these freedoms unfortunately continued, on the ground, to face vast difficulties and subjected to grave violations. The consecutive governments, after the revolution, were not able to read the Egyptian labour movement and figure out its features and its fair demands and did not seek to overcome Mubarak’s regime’s position of it. Moreover, it fell into taking a condescending position of it calling it “factional movements”.

• The absence of social justice was a main motive for the 25^th of January revolution and a fundamental demand of it manifested in its first slogan. It invited millions to join its rank but remains a far away wish.

We no doubt realize the difficulties of the era our country is going through and the dangers it contains and the critical economic situation. We also understand the pressing necessity to provide a sufficient amount of stability necessary to face the dangers of terrorism and improve the economic conditions trusting in the inherent possibilities for developing all our conditions not only to exit the bottleneck but also to rush into the wide-open horizon.

But to overcome the wretched condition of that our society has reached in the decades of stagnation and facing the difficulties of the current era that is restrained by all the pitfalls of the past and exploding with its pain and heritage and obsession and weighed down with its sins and its personalities many of whom are still in office, cannot happen without the participation of the social parties in a true partnership that starts with the table of discussions and serious negotiations and ends with agreements and a clear road map.

True democracy that the Egyptian people have rebelled demanding it and not just mere representative institutions and parliamentary elections is independent unions and civil society organizations. Organizations where workers and social sectors express their interests directly. They are effective and democratic mechanisms for collective negotiations and participation in decision-making. Mechanisms for societal supervision over the resources of society that have been wasted in miserable years where all supervision was absent and the consciousness and mind of society was absent with the absence of democracy.

·        The 2014 constitution, our new material social contract to which we are bond, in its seventy sixth article that “forming unions and syndicates on a democratic basis is a right granted by law and they are independent entities that practice their activities freely and participate in raising the level of efficiency among its members and defending their rights. The state guarantees the independence of syndicates and unions and their boards may not be annulled except by a court order and none of them may be established in recruiting authorities”

This freedom – that has to be preserved and not detracted from- “results from a first rule in union organization which is given constitutional status in some countries that accordingly guarantees the right of each worker to join the organization he feels comfortable with and to join one of them or more – when there is a multitude- to become a member in it or to avoid them all and not enter through their door and likewise to retract from remaining in them choosing to end his membership. (The higher constitutional court, the verdict in case number 6 for the year 15)

But workers in Egypt have long been deprived of practicing their unalienable constitutional right to form their own labour organizations that they can establish freely of their own will. The rules of the union law number 35 for the year 1976 and its amendments obstructed this right instead of organizing its practice, especially in what it stipulated about giving an organizational nature to only one organization (The General Union of Egyptian Workers ) in articles number 7, 13, 14, 17, 52 in addition to the authority that the law gives to the higher levels of the organization  especially the board of the General Union over the procedures of election and nomination to the boards of the unions (articles number 41, 42, 43) and the prevalence practiced by the General Union’s board over financial management of the unions (articles 62 and 65). They are all articles that were reason for comments by the committee on the implementation of treaties and recommendation of the ILO for their extreme contradiction between them and the Labour agreement number 87 that is ratified by the Egyptian government. These comments were the reason Egypt was recorded among the short list of “individual cases” for the first time in 2008. They were discussed in the general 97^th ILO conference and was reinstated in the short list for the same reason in the years 2010 and 2013 because no serious steps were taken towards the government’s abidance by its obligations and aligning with the signed treaties with regard to the formation of unions and the right to organizing and collective negotiations.

It may be obvious that the Egyptian government’s fulfillment of the requirements related to the basic work standards requires the issuance of a new law on labour freedoms and getting rid of legal restrictions such as the unconstitutional law that  deviates sharply from the international labour standards. It also requires the removal of all the consequences of enforcing these restraints for long decades, foremost among which is the disgraceful situation regarding  the General Union of Egyptian workers since the current composition of the authorities of the General Union allow for serious recourse depriving it from all legitimacy as follow:

1.      The annulment of all the boards and authorities of the General Union of Egyptian Workers, the membership for which was according to ministerial decrees number 298, 299, 300, 301 for the year 2006 with the violations that were involved in them against labour freedoms and which were most apparent in imposing restraints on the right to nomination, violation the rights of nominees to communicate with their constituencies and presenting their ideas freely and not equating between them. As well as the transgressions during the electoral process which cannot be denied – they were recorded by the monitors'’ reports and by journalists with pictures and documents. Their clearest manifestations was the deprivation of large numbers of “members” of their right to be nominated as over a hundred court verdicts were issued declaring the elections and the decisions organizing them, null, in particular

• Higher administrative court verdict in cases 661 and 708 for the judicial year 48, pronounced on 6/5/2006
• Verdict number 1827 for the judicial year 61 pronounced on 2/6/2006 putting on hold the decision of the minister of labour force number 296 for the year 2006 to regulate the elections of the labour union committees
• Verdict number 3469 for the judicial year 61 issued on 12/11/2006 putting on hold the decision of the minister of labour force number 298 296 for the year 2006 to regulate the elections of the general unions
• Verdict number 4328 for the judicial year 61 issued on 26/11/2006 putting on hold the decision of the minister of labour force and migration number 300 for the year 2006 to regulate the elections of the General Union for Egyptian Workers

Neglecting the implementation of these verdicts in the years leading up to the January 2011 revolution does not detract from its validity and does fault its consequential annulment of all authorities of the General Union of Egyptian Workers and its syndicates. It also does not return its lost legitimacy

2.      According to the requirements of these verdicts and in accordance with the cabinet’s decision – while headed by Dr Essam Sharaf- on its 20^th session held on 4/8/2011 to annul the board of the General Union and assigning the – former- minister of labour force and migration to form a temporary committee to run the General Union and to take any necessary measures to complete the execution of the verdicts that have been issued in this regard.

Accordingly the ministerial decisions number 188, 189, 190 for the year 2011 were issued, forming the temporary committee for managing the General Union and specifying its mandate.

The ministerial decision number 232 was issued annulling the boards of seven general unions; the union for building industries, timber and building materials, the union for public utilities workers, the union for workers in chemicals, the union for administrative and social services workers, the union for workers in engineering, mineral and electrical industries, the union for maritime transportation  and the union for workers in communications.

3.      Representatives for the boards of the general union of workers in chemicals and the union for workers in engineering, mineral and electrical industries and the union for workers in public utilities and the union for workers in communication filed law suits number 55409, 55711 for the judicial year 65 to object the ministerial decision number 232 for the year 2011 which included the annulment of the boards of the general unions and assigning a temporary committee to run them. The administrative court issued a verdict on Sunday 4/3/2012, rejecting the two suits because the administrative decision was annulled based on that the annulment of the unions is not an administrative decision but is a decision to execute court verdicts and therefore is not subject to objection.

Therefore these two verdicts not only assert  the correctness of the decision to annul the boards of seven general unions but also shows that the continuation of the rest of the boards of the authorities is a mistake.

4.      Moreover, and before and after, on Sunday first of April 2012 a verdict by the Higher constitutional court number 220 for the year 19 was issued declaring item 11 of the decision by the minster of labour force and training number 146 for the year 1996 invalid. This article stipulates the formation of a subsidiary committee for the elections headed by one of the workers in the ministry of labour force and migration or its local offices and the membership of two members that the president chooses from among the members of the general assembly.

Consequently to this verdict and the declaration that a core procedure of the union elections is unconstitutional, the annulment of the committees that are supposed to be elected accordingly is confirmed.

5.       During the past four years the union term was extended. It was supposed to end in 2011 according to the law decisions and the authorities of the union were changed four times according to reconciliatory decisions issued by the minister of labour force and migration. Since all the authorities of the General Union and its syndicates are invalid according to court verdicts and has lost its legitimacy by power of the these decisions it cannot regain this legitimacy by the power of the same decisions. If the presumably elected boards have lost their legitimacy so what could be the case with appointed boards!!

• We feel pity that the shameful union system adherent to the regime before January 2011 and associated with all mechanisms of corruption and tools that everyone is aware of. We assert once more the corruption of this system built on holding the union system close to the regime and imposing an "official" nature on it as an establishment of the state and using it in this context. This relationship has proved its failure in all totalitarian regimes and its failure to perform all the roles that it was based on and was formed for. On the contrary it was one of the reasons for the ending of the legitimacy of these systems and the collapse of their institutions.

If the "old official" General Union of Egyptian Workers intends to attack independent unions and throw accusations at them, then we assert that this union's fight is not with us. The real conflict - for the past years and decades - is the conflict between the workers and this institution from which they never saw a decent day, and which is an institution of the old regime and one of the tools of homogeny, defeat and corruption

Your Excellency

We therefore invite you to  champion the cause of Egyptian workers in forming their unions freely.

May God guide you to what is good for all of us

And please accept our utmost respect