Report: Socio-Economic Consequences of Pandemic COVID-19

Monday, November 2, 2020 - 13:03

 

 

Socio-Economic Consequences of Pandemic COVID-19

On the Status of Egyptian Workers:

Increased Unemployment with Loss of Jobs

 

Preamble

Under the circumstances witnessed worldwide since the spread of Coronavirus in every country, the pandemic social and economic damages will obviously have an important impact at both national and global levels.  This one of the results from the set of adopted preventive measures to counteract the virus such as isolation, quarantine, social distancing, prevention from travelling, total closure of all State institutions including schools, universities, companies and factories, leisure commodities and touristic firms; these measures had a negative effect on all economies over the world and the global system entered in a stage of stagnation influencing in turn the social and economic status of people, including in Egypt.  Undoubtedly, the present crisis will affect everybody despite the variety of its intensity among countries according to their economic and political status.

In order to face the current crisis, the Egyptian government issued a set of measures at the economic and health levels which affected the society as a whole, especially workers[1] and more specifically workers in the private sector and non-organized sectors; this led to the deterioration of their own living conditions and that of their families with the huge loss of jobs.  Actually, the main reason behind this degradation was due to the coercive measures and decisions adopted by business employers: termination and collective firing of workers in some institutions; it also included abstention from disbursing salaries or reduction of salaries while forcing workers to provide the same hours of work as before the pandemic; in many cases employers refrained from implementing the preventive measures prescribed by WHO and confirmed by the Egyptian government according to the international labor standards and to the Egyptian Labor Law 12/2003 stating the rules of professional security in general and those to be specifically applied in epidemic circumstances.  Therefore, workers lacked the basic requirements of health and legal protection as illustrated by the numbers of those contaminated and deaths in their ranks.

The crisis had also a drastic effect in the sector of medical services considered by the State as the first line of defense against the virus and the main cornerstone in the global fight to overcome this fatal pandemic.  Providing adequate protective and preventive measures to medical teams should have represented a national strategic goal in delivering close protection; hospitals are actually a notorious center for the reproduction of the virus, exposing thus medical staff to increased risk of contamination; on the other hand, the society is in dire need for the humanitarian services provided by this staff; however, the poor conditions of medical facilities, limited allocations to the health sector, and inappropriate means of protection (such as the provision of sufficient masks and adequate sterilization of hospitals) resulted in number of infections and deaths among physicians, nursing, first aid rescuers and technical support staff.

In the same context, the crisis revealed the status of workers in the informal sector estimated according to the Central Agency of Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) to around 5.6 million with 277,000 workers on a daily basis, 233,000 seasonal workers in governmental institutions, in addition to 609,000 seasonal workers in other settings, and 3.7 million working on irregular base in the private sector; all these categories were confronted with enormous challenges due to the closure of leisure and touristic facilities besides street vendors affected by the closing of open-air markets, in addition to the eternal problem of domestic workers that took a new dimension with the pandemic as the majority of Egyptian households got rid of them by fear of being contaminated; this happened without any material retribution and reconfirms the fragility of their legal and social status.  Therefore, Coronavirus crisis unveiled the degrading living conditions of the entire informal sector beginning from poverty, unemployment, reliance on charity and culminating with the exorbitant price of accessing health services combined with lack of legal protection.  Actually, both systems of social and health security cover only workers in the formal sector, totally ignoring those falling outside this classification not only in times of crises but generally speaking even before the current pandemic.  This is to say that the virus came to reveal their poor conditions and absence of basic means of protection.  Meanwhile, ministerial decree 776/2020 announced the creation of a council responsible of collecting data about the workers affected from COVID-19 economic consequences; however, many workers failed from registering their data within the ambiguity about who was/was not targeted by the decree.

According to its methodology of work, CTUWS decided to identify and document the socio-economic impact of the pandemic on the lives of workers in the most damaged sectors, i.e. the private sector with its industrial and service-providing components, tourism, the health sector/informal sector.  As a first step, the purpose was to understand and analyze the crisis in a general context at the national and global levels, as well as its direct and rapid outcomes.

Accordingly, CTUWS team of monitoring and documentation developed the present report seeking in addition to examine the status of women workers under this situation.  The report aims at understanding the nature of the current period, the impact of measures and decisions adopted by the State, the decisions of business owners including the attitude of private hospitals, and the role played by civil society organizations (CSOs) and private initiatives.  The important issue to be addressed now is how State institutions are preparing themselves to surmount the crisis and its negative effects primarily for workers and the most fragile social categories; this should entail the development of a strategy by all stakeholders to provide strict and rapid solutions leading to the achievement of social justice, professional and health security.  According to the best scenarios developed by experts, the economic stagnation will last at the global level at least from five to six years.

Thus, what we need today is an effective honest re-evaluation of the past period's pros and cons, redirection of the trajectory, and inclusion of the civil society (CSOs, political parties and workers' trade unions) in the process.

CTUWS

October 14 2020

 

 

Methodology of the report

In line with CTUWS working methods based on its mandate to provide support and capacity building to workers and their trade unions, the first identified objective since the emergence of COVID-19 was to monitor and document the consequences of the pandemic and the threat on workers' status and lives, with focus on the most affected categories: the private sector with its industrial and service-providing components, tourism, the health sector/including private and governmental sector.

Tools used in the report:

  • Field research through the collection of life testimonies of workers about the reality they experimented in terms of violations and harms at the work place.  This was conducted through personal interviews and direct discussion with workers, representing a more realistic approach enabling to get informed in detail about their suffering, and the deterioration of their living conditions.  Although these testimonies do not hold the same strength of the data and statistics used in the analysis of the crisis and its dimensions, they nevertheless present a detailed image of the legal and economic environment in which they work.  The field research was conducted between 15 March and 15 September 2020.

 

  • The report includes five axes
  • First axis: general background about the global repercussions of COVID-19 on workers and its socio-economic consequences;
  • Second axis: monitoring the policies and measures adopted by the State during the crisis, besides the attitudes of business owners and private hospitals, and the role of the civil society and personal initiatives;
  • Third axis: monitoring and documenting the violations of workers' rights inside the selected sectors; the second part of this axis is devoted to the status of women workers under the crisis and its effects on them;
  • Fourth axis: analysis of the situation on the base of the economic and social indicators for each sector included in the report;
  • Fifth axis: Final findings and main recommendations.

 

  • Steps and tools used for data collection
  1. CTUWS team of monitoring and documentation counts nine sub-teams in the following governorates: Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Ismailia, Port-Said, Minia, Gharbia, Suez, and the tenth of Ramadan;
  2. It is worth mentioning that CTUWS is constantly dealing with these monitoring and documentation sub-groups, and provided training sessions on the necessary skills for the majority of their members.  This enabled us to develop a guidebook presenting a series of criteria to be used in the process of monitoring; these criteria were explained to the groups through mobile communication to serve either in direct observation or in interviews inside companies.  Long distance learning was necessary during the period of isolation generalized in the country (guidebook enclosed in Annex I, end of the report).
  3. Each sub-group monitored and documented the violations that occurred against workers at the work place and sent their reports to CTUWS central team who gathered all the reports and categorized them by sector with subtitles divided into: actions of protest, injuries, deaths due to the virus, business owners' coercive actions: decisions of termination/collective firing/abstention from releasing salaries or reduction of salaries.
  4. CTUWS central monitoring and documentation team relied also on information and data issued by number of national and international institutions: CAPMAS, Ministries of Labor Force, Health, Tourism, Syndicate of Medicine, Syndicate of First Aid rescuers, Syndicate of Nursing, General Syndicate of Workers in Health Sciences; as well as ILO, World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Health Organization (WHO).  In addition, they referred to declarations of businessmen, as well as previous studies that analyzed the crisis at the global and national levels.

The report was prepared by the following teams

  1. CTUWS monitoring and documentation working group;
  2. CTUWS legal bureau;
  3. Groups of monitors in the governorates;
  4. CTUWS editorial team.

 

First axis

General background about the global situation under COVID-19 pandemic's socio-economic repercussions

Our world of today experiments an unusual and exceptional situation that will undoubtedly create an important turning point for all countries, not only because of the virus danger, but also for its impact at the social and economic levels directly affecting all international interactions; actually, the widespread pandemic worldwide forced all countries to adopt a set of preventive measures: isolation, quarantine, social distancing, and stopping travels.  This affected negatively the global economy that went through a state of stagnation and consequently, the emergence of an unexpected global economic crisis reaching everybody.  The crisis was harmful in terms of production, aid and supply, air transport, low international demand of products, isolation inside countries either through quarantine or curfew imposition; such situation affected the sectors of finances, air flights, transport, and tourism, causing disastrous losses among them.

Experts are unable until now to identify the size of negative changes, the devastating repercussions of the pandemic globally before the release of final statistics about the numbers of victims and identification of the specific duration of its impact on the global economy.  However, it is clear that as long as the virus remains out of control, its effects will be higher and more dangerous, especially for developing countries and the Arab region.  Economic experts predicted that the average share of income per capita will decrease by 3.6% causing the fall of millions under the line of poverty; in the same context, the international economic institutions looked at 2021 situation with cautious optimism as a natural result of the state of uncertainty about the future in case the pandemic remained out of control until the end of 2020.

In April 2020, IMF "World's Economic Outlook" report projected that the global economy would contract sharply by -3 percent in 2020 while a later report projected that the global growth would be at -4.9% in 2020, i.e. 1.9 percent below the April projection.  According to another report about third quarter of 2020, the economic growth is expected to be slower than previously forecast, and in 2021, global growth is projected at 5.4%, adding that "the adverse impact on low-income households is particularly acute, imperiling the significant progress made in reducing extreme poverty in the world since the 1990s".

WB projections expect deep repercussions on the global economy due to the slow-down of activities during the period of general isolation; the Fund recommended the States to ensure the availability of sufficient resources for health care systems, and called the global community to grant financial aid to the countries with limited capacities in the field of health care.  The Fund also projected that Coronavirus will lead to shrink the global economic product by 5.2% in 2020 despite unprecedented financial aid, and that it will push around 100 million people into extreme poverty showing a more pessimist stand than its previous estimate of 60 million people.

David Malpass, president of the World Bank Group, declared that it is the poor who were the most affected worldwide by the pandemic and the processes of closing the economic space; he added that we are facing a new reality and unprecedented challenges requiring huge efforts to overcome the crisis.

Along with the same line, UN Economic and Social Council for West Asia (ESCWA) warned that the Arab region would lose at least 1.7 million jobs in 2020, and unemployment rate would increase by 1.2 %; the organization added that unlike the global financial crisis of 2008, the Corona pandemic is damaging employment across all services, especially the services sector.

The United Nations announced that COVID-19 will highly increase unemployment worldwide, leaving 25 million without jobs which will result in the reduction of workers' income.  A research about the economic impact of COVID-19 on the black continent conducted by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) indicates that the economic growth will be highly negatively affected, and in case the crisis is reduced during the forthcoming months, the projected economic growth in Africa will decrease from 3.2 to 1.8% in 2020; however, if the crisis extends after end of the summer, the continent will witness for the first time since decades, a state of economic recession of around 2.6 % by the end of 2020.  The study adds that since day one, an initiative was launched to invite the global community providing immediately to the continent a support of about 100 billion US dollars including 44 billion to cancel the 2020 interests on debts for all African countries.  It also clarified that if the impact of the crisis would extend until next year, the global community should support Africa with another 50 billion dollars for the process of economic building and economic reform. 

As of ILO, it considers that the Arab States and Europe are the most regions affected at the economic level by pandemic COVID-19; the international organization also estimates that the labor force worldwide lost during the first nine months of 2020 10.7% of their income due to the virus; this percentage representing 3.5 billion dollars. 

According to the Middle East News agency (23 September 2020), ILO added in the report that Coronavirus pandemic have caused a "massive" drop in labor income and a fiscal stimulus gap threatening to increase the breach between rich and poor countries.  The same report indicates that the biggest drop was in lower-middle income countries where the labor losses reached 15.11% with the hardest hit region in the Americas at 12.1%.  ILO Monitor: "COVID-19 and the world of work", sixth edition says that the global working hours losses in the first nine months of 2020 have been "considerably larger" than estimated in a previous edition of the Monitor; the revised estimate of global working time lost in the second quarter of year 2020 compared to the fourth is of 17.3%, equivalent to 495 million full time equivalent jobs based on 48 working hours per week, whereas the earlier estimate was of 14%, or 400 million full time equivalent jobs.  The report expected for the third quarter of 2020 global working hour losses of 12.1%, i.e. 345 million full time equivalent jobs.  Global working hour losses are projected to amount to 8.6% in the fourth quarter of 2020 corresponding to 245 million full time equivalent jobs.  This is an increase from ILO's previous estimate of 4.9% of 140 million full time equivalent jobs.  The report adds that one reason for the estimated increases in working hour losses in developing and emerging economies, especially those in informal employment, is that they have been much more affected now than by previous crises.  It also warned that an international economic crisis would arise if governments didn't take prompt measures to protect workers from the pandemic repercussions, and called for urgent, organized and wide measures to protect workers at the work place, activate the economy and support jobs and incomes.

ESCWA also predicted than over 8 million of Arabs will join the ranks of the poor, warning that the number of those suffering from malnutrition will increase by two million and the classified as poor in the region will amount to 101.4 million beside 52 million suffering from malnutrition.

 A UN study about the financial and human cost of the pandemic alerts that the levels of poverty in the world will amount to half a billion, i.e. an estimate increase in the number of people affected by poverty around the world ranging between 400 and 600 million; it is the first time that poverty has increased globally in thirty years in such a rate; according to the study, the probable impact of the virus poses a real challenge to the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) of ending poverty by 2030.  Professor Christopher Hoy, from the Australian National University, indicates in the study that "the economic crisis is potentially going to be more severe than the health crisis", and he foresees that by the time the pandemic will be over, half of the world population amounting to 7.8 billion will live in poverty and 40% of the new poor will likely be concentrated in Eastern Asia and the Pacific region, and in other regions such as the Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, COVID-19 could result in poverty levels similar to those recorded thirty years ago.  Co-author, Professor Andy Sumner of King's College London said "our findings point towards the importance of a dramatic expansion of social safety net" adding that this should be achieved the soonest for developing countries by drawing much greater attention to what the international community can do to help.

In an analytical study, the United Nations Conference of Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reiterates that the shock provoked by Coronavirus will lead to economic stagnation in some countries and decrease the global annual development for this year to less than 2.5%; in worse scenario, we will witness a deficit in the global income amounting to two billion dollars requiring the elaboration of coordinated policies to avoid the collapse of the world economy.

The most debatable questions currently raised by economists are: what will happen to the global economy from mid to long term?  Will the world go through a state of stagnation followed by a sudden resurgence as soon as the virus becomes under control, or will the world witness a slow ascending recovery for number of forthcoming years?  These questions are quite pertinent, especially that WB report mentions that the crisis has severe effects on the labor force worldwide regardless the place of residency or the sector of employment; it added that the crisis motivated by the pandemic is expected to abolish 6.7% of the overall global working time during the second half of 2020, i.e. the equivalent of 195 million full-time jobs including five million in Arab countries; on this base, the report called for the adoption of policies focusing on the provision of urgent aids to companies and workers in order to protect their living income; this includes vital fields of work in the economic sector, specifically the more affected than others, pointing out that the most damaged services and factories employ large numbers of informal workers with low wages, limited access to health services or to the security nets provided by governments.  The report affirms the necessity of adopting urgent policies without which workers will face the danger of falling into extreme poverty and joining the ranks of the unemployed; they will also be confronted with great difficulty to return to their previous jobs due to the new trends that arose in the field of work during the crisis and led to produce changes in the labor market's requirements, creating thus need for better skilled workers.

A study conducted by the National Institute of Planning, affiliated to the Egyptian Ministry of Planning, about the impact of Coronavirus on the country economy and the various economic sectors indicates that 824 thousand Egyptians are exposed to the loss of jobs since the beginning of the crisis until the end of current fiscal year 2019-2020; the study predicts an increase in the rate of unemployment if the crisis would last until end of 2020 and, consequently, 1.2 million people will lose their jobs.  According to the study, this is due to the ascending number of unemployed, the rise of inflation rate, and the recession of earning levels.  Available indicators refer to three possible scenarios about the impact of poverty on the current crisis; the first "optimistic" scenario is that the rates of poverty will reach 38%, i.e. growing by 5.5% and will lead to add 5,6 million of poor during 2020-2021; the second "medium-mild" scenario is that the rate of poverty will reach 40.2%, i.e. affecting 7.7 millions of individuals for the same period; as of the third and more "pessimistic" scenario, it considers that the rate of poverty will exceed 44%, meaning a new rise in the number of the poor to around 12.5 million. Actually, per capita share from the gross domestic product is below 1% and leads to increased poverty by 0.7%; in addition, the escalation of unemployment by 1% results in the rise of poverty rate to around 1.5%; moreover, a 1% increase in the rate of inflation will raise the percentage of poverty by around 0.4%.

 

Second axis

Monitoring the policies and measures adopted by the government during the crisis

The international labor standards recommend specific guidelines ensuring decent work conditions in times of crises that are applicable to COVID-19.crisis.  Recent ILO Recommendation on "Employment, Decent Work for Peace and Resilience" (205/2017) emphasizes "the need to ensure respect of all human rights and the rule of law, including respect of fundamental principles and rights at work", highlights the importance of "stabilizing livelihoods and income through immediate social protection and employment measures"; and refers to the necessity of "taking measures, as appropriate, for the economic reintegration of persons who have been affected by a crisis".  Therefore, when a worker is infected by Coronavirus during work, this can be considered a professional injury deserving financial compensation and medical protection.  ILO Convention on "Employment Injury Benefits" (121/1964) stipulates that "National legislation concerning employment injury benefits shall protect all employees" and "secure to the persons protected the provision of the following benefits: medical care and allied benefits in respect of a condition; cash benefits; periodical payments; indemnity for unemployment; the cash benefit in respect of the death of a breadwinner shall be a periodical payment to a widow, a disabled and dependent widower, dependent children of the deceased, and funeral benefit".  ILO Convention on "Employment Promotion and Protection against Unemployment" (168/1988) as well as the Convention on "Protection of Wages" (95/1949) confirm that "benefits shall be provided in the form of periodical payments".

In Convention on "Termination of Employment" (158/1982), we read: "the employment of a worker shall not be terminated unless there is a valid reason connected with the capacity or conduct of the worker or based on the operational requirements of the undertaking, establishment or service" and "when the employer contemplates terminations for reasons of an economic, technological, structural or similar nature, the employer shall: a) provide the workers' representatives concerned in good time with relevant information including the reasons for the terminations contemplated, the number and categories of workers likely to be affected and the period over which the termination is intended to be carried out; b) give, in accordance with national law and practices, the workers' representative concerned, as early as possible, an opportunity for consultation on measures to be taken to avert or to minimize the adverse effects on any termination on the workers concerned such as finding alternative employment".  In line with the previous Convention, ILO issued the Recommendation on "Termination of Unemployment" (166/1982) that reconfirms the importance for all parties concerned to minimize as far as possible termination of employment for the reasons enumerated above ("…without prejudice to the efficient operation of the undertaking, establishment or service, and to mitigate the adverse effects of any termination of employment for these reasons on the worker or workers concerned"); the Recommendation encourages also the competent authority to "assist the concerned parties in seeking solutions to the problems raised by the terminations contemplated".  Returning back to Convention 95/1949 stipulating that "wages should be paid regularly", we note another clause indicating that "upon termination of a contract employment, a final settlement of all wages due shall be effected in accordance with national laws and regulations, collective agreement or arbitration award or, in the absence of any applicable law, regulations, agreement or award, within a reasonable period of time having regard to the terms of the contract".

In ILO document about international labor standards (ILS) and COVID-19 (23 March 2020), Guy Ryder, ILO Director-General refers to the role of international organization in maintaining a system contributing in implementing ILS and "promoting opportunities for all to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity".

Actually, ILS are a useful tool for the measurement of decent work in terms of safety and health, protection of certain categories of workers, working arrangements, non-discrimination, social security, wage and employment protection, small and medium enterprises' protection.  Abiding to these guiding standards contributes to a culture of cooperation at the workplace in order to develop policies than are human-centered towards the crisis raised by the pandemic.  This culture is essential to establish the necessary pillars preventing everybody to fall in the dilemma of the work conditions during and after the crisis.  These ILS are reviewed and developed periodically to respond to the changing patterns in the world of work for the purpose of protecting workers while taking into account the needs of sustainability for enterprises.  In this context, it is imperative to adopt urgent and coordinated measures on a wide scope in the following main streams: protection of workers at the work place, encouraging employment and economic development, and supporting jobs and incomes; these streams include the widening of social protection, paid holidays, supporting the retention of employees by reducing working hours, and other benefits, financial and tax exemptions including for small and medium enterprises.

In light of the standards referred to in ILO document, it is legitimate to ask ourselves about the conditions of Egyptian workers since the eruption of the pandemic in the country until now.  In order to answer this question, let us examine the following facts:

The government adopted measures in response to COVID-19 outbreak

  1. On the 12th of April 2020, a press conference was held during which a Ministry of Labor Force decision was announced to disburse an aid of 500 pounds[2] for workers according to a data base compiled all over the country; the lists were delivered to the post offices to begin payments for 120,000 workers registered in the directorates of labor force data bases.  The amount of 3,782,500 pounds were allocated to 7565 workers in the fields of construction and agriculture who are part of the non-organized sector; this award consisted in paying each worker 500 pounds/month in installments over three months, and be cashed from any post office beginning 29 March 2020.  In fact, around 1.6 million persons obtained the first and second installment last April and May; the second group of beneficiaries amounted to around 1.62 million non-organized workers and disbursed amounts reached the sum of 800 million Egyptian pounds; however, this grant won't be extended to more than 10% of workers in the non-organized sector as the set criteria of eligibility applies only to a minority of these workers, i.e. those who were already registered in the government's books and had obtained a certificate of competence from the directorates of labor force; the Ministry of Labor Force had declared that not all free-lance workers could be considered belonging to the non-organized sector restricted to five fields of work: entrepreneurship & contracting, agricultural workers, workers in quarries and mines, fishermen, and workers in ports; in addition, those should have their profession registered in the ID; accordingly, 55,075 workers only were considered eligible and compatible with the criteria of non-organized workers in the age bracket 18-59 years old.  What will be then the fate of other workers who are in the non-organized sector and don't possess the required qualifications, such as street vendors, domestic workers and workers on a daily basis?
  2. A presidential decree was issued to reunite the five raises due to pensioners accounted at 80% of the basic salary and grant them the regular raise of pensions by 14% beginning next financial year; all this does not represent a real value capable of meeting the actual needs of households as the mentioned raise per person amounts to 150 Egyptian pounds; in addition, the decree abolished the tax on agricultural lands that represent 14% of the rent cost for one acre of agricultural land;
  3. The State adopted other decisions to activate the market in support of the private sector such as subsidizing the Stock Market with twenty million pounds, and decreasing the prices of fuel and electricity for large industrial enterprises; on the other hand, the cost of public services remained the same despite the harms caused for lower income citizens who were providing nearly 30% of the non-organized labor; this resulted in forbidding assemblies of people and consequently banning popular vendors and markets that included around 30% of non-organized workers; moreover, the State reduced interests on savings and deposit accounts by 3% while avoiding to take any measures to support the most vulnerable categories.  It was foreseen to postpone some of small borrowers' interests on loans to banks or personal loans of employees in the governmental and private sectors as well as owners of small enterprises affected by the lockdown.
  4. Regarding the tourism sector, the Central Bank of Egypt sent directives to banks for granting easy loans to touristic firms and hotels in order to enable their sustainability; the chamber of touristic enterprises – which is a business owners organization – is currently attempting to bargain with the concerned parties in order to involve the government in assuming the salaries of their workers; in parallel, the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities requested from the Minister of Labor Force to provide the salaries of these workers from the Emergency Fund.  As far as we are informed, the said Fund won't be able to cover the salaries of such huge sector, and even if it does so, it will cover only – according to its own by-laws - the basic salaries of these workers that are a minable portion of the amounts they used to receive with the deduction of extra allowances and other types of incentives;
  5. Three million pounds were allocated to the sector of tourism to cover employees' salaries and reactivate hotels and touristic villages within the pandemic crisis, with repayment of the loan in monthly installments over two years in order to alleviate the burden on the shoulders of this sector; the purpose of this loan was to cover salaries of employees and workers in these enterprises;
  6. On the other hand, real estate taxes for touristic and hotel facilities were postponed for six months, and refunds given a three-month permission of delay without any penalties;
  7. Regarding workers in the private sector, the government requested from business owners to reduce their staff along with the governmental decision about the public and governmental sectors without decreasing the salaries of some specific categories such as mothers caring for children in the educational stage, and people affected by chronic illness; however, business people refuted this proposal;
  8. Banks and the Ministry of Religious Endowment launched initiatives in support of workers in the non-organized sector; these initiatives cannot be underestimated despite all the accompanying media show and the practices that might be humiliating for the beneficiaries;
  9. Reduction in the price of natural gas for heavy industries by 4.5 dollars for every million unit, in addition to the decrease of electricity price for industries of high-effort by 10 piasters for every kilowatt, and the provision of exporters during the months of March and April with a million pounds, together with the postponement of the real estate tax for factories and touristic enterprises; these are all indicators to whom goes the governmental bias; as mentioned earlier, we add the reduction of benefit interests by 3%, the subsidy to the Stock Exchange with 20 million pounds, the reduction of the tax about the distribution of capital benefits for companies registered at the Stock Market by 50% to become as low as 5%, the total exemption of direct operations from the tax on stamps aiming at revitalizing the size of exchange, the total and final exemption of non-residents from the tax of capital benefits and the postponement of collecting this tax from residents until January 2022, as well as other exemptions for small and medium enterprises are all clearly referring to the prevailing trend;
  10. Some measures were enacted for the health sector, such as total stopping work in external clinics belonging to the health security hospitals, the agency of educational hospitals, the secretariat of specialized health centers, and therapeutic institutions; emergency cases were to be hosted only by public and central hospitals with stimulation of specialized clinics only (general physicians, pediatrics, gynecology, and surgery) and transforming external clinics into backup to emergency clinics; another decree was to create a Fund of professional risks for workers in the health sector and disburse an exceptional compensation of 1200 pounds for every doctor and 700 for every nurse from "Long Live Egypt" Fund as an attempt to praise the efforts of health workers in the centers dealing with Coronavirus patients as announced by the President's official spokesman; this amount was considered also by the government as an indemnity against contamination while this indemnity is an issue constantly raised by the health staff, even before Coronavirus pandemic, mainly in the hospitals of  quarantine, epidemic fevers, and central laboratories at the Republic level.  The Syndicate of Medicine was only able to allocate 100,000 pounds to each doctor deceased from COVID-19, and 20,000 pounds to each one contaminated by the virus.
  11. A ministerial decree was enacted to deduct 1% of all workers' salaries in the governmental and public sectors and one half percent from the pensions due to pensioners over a year to address the repercussions of the pandemic;
  12. The price of natural gas for industrial enterprises was reduced to around 4.5 dollars;

 

It is important to note that on 11 May 2020, WB executive committee agreed to lend Egypt 2,772 billion dollars through the system of rapid loans in order to contribute alleviating the economic and financial impact of COVID-19; in this context, the State declared that this new disbursement will support its efforts to respond to the repercussions of the virus, help the Egyptian economy keep the gains achieved by the program of economic reform and allow the Emergency Fund as was stated by the government to redress the needs of the urgent balance of payments, support the most affected sectors and the most needy social categories as well as important services like health, and increase the spending on social care.

Role of the civil society, individual initiatives and workers' trade unions

  • Role of CSOs
  • Providing technical support to workers in the non-organized sector by helping them registering their data in the official website of the Labor Force Ministry which had declared that the affected ones by the pandemic would obtain a 500 pounds allowance;
  • Following-up the global situation about the virus, declared preventive measures to protect workers from the effects of the socio-economic crisis, and analyzing the state of Egyptian workers according to ILS and the Egyptian Labor Law 12/2003;
  • Providing legal aid for workers affected from the decisions of employers in order to help them restoring their rights as provided in international conventions and laws regulating work relations;
  • Monitoring the number of injuries and the percentage of deaths among workers in the health sector, including the number of protests and violations of workers' rights at the work place;
  • Monitoring the attitude of business employers towards workers inside companies as well as their coercive decisions;
  • Monitoring the arrogance of private hospitals and the role of the private health sector during the crisis;
  • Issuing studies and reports by organizations and individuals analyzing the pandemic crisis and its impact, contributing thus to shed the light about the extent of workers' economic and social deterioration affecting their living conditions.

 

  • Individual initiatives and role of social solidarity in supporting number of households affected from contamination
  • Groups of people begun to prepare meals for the households affected by the virus and put on quarantine;
  • The Egyptian initiative to produce 5000 artificial respiratory devices: the initiative target was to raise the capacity and efficiency of intensive care units by reproducing 5000 PB560 based on the designs released by an international firm; the idea of the initiative was to create a group of specialized engineers, medical doctors, and experts in projects' management and contact the Agency of Arab Industry as well as the holding company of mineral industries to produce these engines in their chains of production in parallel to open the channels for the collection of donations to the campaign through accredited and trustable philanthropic associations; finally, the campaign aimed at organizing medical trainings to promote specialized cadres in using the apparatus in all Egyptian governorates.  This campaign sought to achieve a tripartite cooperation including the industrial sector, CSOs and the State in order to achieve the soonest and most efficiently the targeted objective.  Actually, a working group was established to examine available designs and study the possibility of their reproduction locally; they discovered there were – in principle - real chances of executing this project in Egypt. 
  • Contributions granted by individuals, the Almsgiving Authority and the Food Bank in support of public hospitals;
  • Role played by the Food Bank through its campaign titled "Supporting on daily base workers is a vital responsibility" that was launched on March 22 and succeeded to distribute 500 thousand boxes of food and provide nutrition support.  We specifically note the role played by the Civil Society and its various initiatives in supporting the governmental health sector that bears the major burden in the fight against Coronavirus pandemic; in addition, many companies and CSOs granted financial donations to the Ministry of Population and Health;
  • There are also the initiatives of preventive support, such as providing hospitals with medical necessities such as tools of personal prevention; one of the prominent examples is that of "Egypt for Goodness" (Masr El Kheir) Association and its contribution in granting isolation and quarantine hospitals at the country level with medical requisites and preventive clothes for doctors and nursing staff.
  • In kind donations from some philanthropic associations to poor families affected by the virus.

 

  • Role of independent workers' trade unions

Despite limited possibilities and the difficult conditions surrounding their freedom of action, they achieved the following:

  • Providing support to contaminated workers by conducting efforts to have them hosted by the Health Security Hospitals;
  • Monitoring and providing some data about the number of workers affected or the number of deaths from the virus in various sectors of work;
  • Providing information about the size of violations and damages affecting workers during the crises at their work places, level of compatibility with professional health and security requirements as well as with the preventive measures recommended by WHO since the emergence of the pandemic;
  • Role of the Syndicate of Medical Doctors and the General Trade Union of Workers in the First Aid Authority in providing data about deaths and contaminations among the health staff;
  • Calls to provide protection to health workers and improve their socio-economic conditions.

 

Attitude of businessmen

While the government adopted number of preventive and protective measures, some big businesspersons released declarations adverse to these measures, confirming the importance of sustaining the production process by resuming work whatever were the repercussions of the pandemic on workers; others requested the reduction of the labor force and decrease of salaries; this provoked a state of anger and denial among the society reaching the point of launching campaigns to boycott the products of some companies as a form of protest against such stands and abstention of the private sector from granting donations to the health sector.

In this context, some declarations reproduced by the press and the social media included the following:

  • Engineer Naguib Sawiris expressed his rejection of the State trend to reduce the number of workers grouped in the same place as well as diminishing working hours in parallel with the curfew as part of the preventive measures against Coronavirus; in a phone intervention with Lamis El Haddidi's famous TV program, he declared: "I am about to become crazy, I try to stand up in open air in front of my house, drive my car until the end of the street and return back; I am for the immediate resuming of work after the end of the curfew because the economy has to be revitalized, especially that the number of deaths is limited and mainly concentrated among old people while the percentage of recovery is higher".
  • Businessman Hussein Sabbour, former president of the Shooting Club board: requested in press declarations that workers and employees return back to work despite the spread of the virus, affirming that Egypt is threatened from bankruptcy in case factories and companies continue to be closed, saying literally: "if the lockdown lasts, Egypt will go to bankruptcy; everyone has a certain capacity, we are a weak country and resuming work is imperative".  The shocking declaration raised revolt against Sabbour because he didn't show concern about the number of contaminations and deaths that would affect people if workers and employees resumed work saying: "even if the number of affected and death increased, there will only be a population existing with a small diminution; this is better than people totally bankrupted, and to whom we won't find the means to provide nutrition", he also declared that he did not fear attacks in reaction to these declaration.
  • Businessman Raouf Ghabbour, chairperson of "GB Auto" declared to channel "Cairo and the people" (Al Qahira wal Nas) that it was necessary to return back to normal life arguing: "Naturally, if people remain at home, the number of affected will diminish; however, this measure will cause a huge economic damage, and acts of robbery will become widespread" adding "Many companies like Nissan and General Motors have problems and about us, we are nearly going to close doors; while I am in need of money, and when someone comes and asks me to make a donation, I say sorry, this will not happen".
  • We actually condemn such provocative declarations of some businessmen that are apparently unaware of what means the public interest in times the country is in dire need of concerted efforts and share of sacrifices.  In this context, CTUWS monitoring and documentation team deployed ultimate efforts to document through life testimonies of workers the violations that occurred at the work place; these will be presented in the next axis; however, a quite indicative example of citizens' life neglect is the attitude of private hospitals:
  • Actually, these hospitals refused to comply with the State decisions about specifying the price of medical care for those affected by the virus; they announced that the prices of treatment will be set according to their own policies; accordingly, the cost of medical showed to be exorbitant amounting at least to ten thousand pounds per day; therefore, the services of private hospitals remained limited to the rich, excluding most of other social classes within a pandemic spread all over the society.

Thus, the crisis proved clearly that each social stakeholder has a role to play, either in periods of crisis or in normal periods; it indicated also the importance of having a strong civil society that should be dealt with as a partner and not as an opponent; finally, it showed that the solution for achieving social justice and equality securing social stability is in promoting the social dialogue and the participation of all parties.

Third axis

Monitoring and documenting violations

  1. This axis presents the violations in the work sectors identified in the report during the period 15 March to 15 September 2020.
  2. In the second part, the chapter will examine the impact of the pandemic on women workers' status and its socio-economic consequences

I – Health Sector

The crisis resulting from Coronavirus revealed the size of problems prevailing in the Egyptian health sector ranging from the poor financial allocations for this sector insufficient to meet its basic needs, the deteriorated quality of services provided in public hospitals lacking the primary requirements of health care, and most importantly the significant shortage in the number of medical doctors and nursing staff; this is due to emigration outside the country in order to find better professional and human working conditions, or resort to the private sector as a consequence of the low salaries incompatible with the efforts deployed.  Before the beginning of the crisis, the Ministry of Health attempted to redress the situation through issuing a law in 2019 to raise the fees of newly graduated doctors working in university hospitals to 2200 pounds monthly.  According to the Syndicate of Medicine president, this raise that was applied six months before the pandemic resulted on imposing additional tasks on the shoulders of all these newly graduates, i.e., the law granted a raise against increased commitments and responsibilities.

In this context, Coronavirus unveiled the size of decline in the status of health staff that were referred to as the first line of defense to fight the pandemic spread; while everybody was confined inside houses, all the health staff including doctors, nurses, rescuers and others were mobilized in a war to combat the fatal epidemic, spending multiplied efforts often depriving them from sufficient sleeping hours in order to provide care to the patients.  The life of all these was exposed to danger while they were not equipped with the adequate means of protection during the practice of their mission.  Since the increase of COVID-19 damages, news circulated about the collapse of many workers in the health sector due to contamination while performing their duties; nevertheless, these information remained ambiguous with the absence of any formal statement by the Ministry of Health concerning these cases similarly to its daily communiqués about the general numbers of infections, deceases, and recovery with no specific mention of the health staff which provoked anger among the sector and a feeling of being neglected by their own Ministry.  Under these circumstances, the Syndicate addressed a letter to the President of the Republic requesting to increase the ridiculously low indemnity against contamination amounting to 19 pounds monthly.  The letter mentioned that "doctors stand in the first line of confrontation with the fatal virus, and are the most exposed to contamination due to their inevitable presence among patients; they are fulfilling their responsibility despite repeated exposure – and their families – to the danger of infection resulting sometimes in severe injuries leading to death for many of them".  This statement raised a public appreciation of their role; however, they still do not obtain the sufficient means of protection from contamination or fair working conditions regarding a decent scale of income.  Meanwhile, they face harsh situations in dealing with the crisis, either by being obliged to work in quarantine hospitals where they are exposed to big dangers unmet with concern on behalf of the Ministry, or granted financial indemnities for the efforts and dangers encountered on a daily base.  Besides, they suffer from the acute lack of basic medical equipment and tools for the necessary analyses to detect the virus; in addition, patients are crowding in the primary help reception halls, increasing thus the chances of contamination.  Most importantly is the lack of sufficient preventive tools to protect all the health staff.

Within this situation, the general trade union's president of workers in health sciences declared that around one hundred members were detected Coronavirus positive, with 13 health technician contaminated in the governorate of Luxor, one technician of laboratory and another of radiology deferred to Armant Hospital, the vice-president of the sub-trade union in Luxor infected during work and passed on the virus to his mother and sister.

The first case of death from Coronavirus beginning of April was Dr. Sonia Abdel Azim from Daqahlia, followed by the vice-dean of Qasr El Aini Faculty of Medicine Dr. Hesham El Saket, then Mohamed Abdallah El Mahsenawi member of the medical staff in El Neguela quarantine Hospital.  A succession of cases followed in the ranks of medical staff: seventeen members of the health staff in the National Center of Cancer were identified positive creating a state of panicking from Coronavirus extending to the patients; according to the collected testimonies, contamination was due to the stubbornness of the Center's administration and refusal of making the PCR test to a member of the nursing staff who had been infected by a girl under treatment in the hospital.  This applies to all doctors working in hospitals due to the lack of health prevention equipment such as sterilizers and anti-virus masks in all governmental health enterprises.  This is added to the neglect by hospitals' administrations of WHO recommendations including the PCR test for all health staff before leaving the work place; consequently, 90 doctors were affected and five died as declared by the general Syndicate of Medicine.  On 25 April 2020, some sources in the Ministry of Population and Health revealed that El Neguela quarantine Hospital would stop receiving new Coronavirus cases in the governorate of Marsa Matrouh, decision due to the infection of 22 members from the medical staff besides the isolation of thirty doctors, nurses and technicians who were interacting with four identified contaminated colleagues in the educational Hospital "El Ahrar" in the city of Zaqazig, Sharkia governorate.  In addition, five departments were closed in the University Hospital of Mansoura after the discovery of nine cases of COVID-19, they included Dr. Manar Sami and her husband Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim, Dr. Abdel Rahman El Shafei and six others as a consequence of their interaction with a physician curing an outside patient; Omar Mohamed, radiology technician in Luxor, was contaminated with his twin children as well as two doctors from the University Hospital in Aswan that decided to suspend work in five departments until having a census of all those interacting with these cases, including medical staff, workers and patients to take the necessary measures for each case.  In this respect, WHO representative in Egypt declared that the percentage of injuries in the medical sector amounts to 13% of the overall cases in the country (Al Shorouq newspaper, 13 April 2020) representing a high percentage among the total number of cases in the country.  On 12 April 2020, the Faculty of Medicine administration and the Menoufia University hospitals suspended work for two weeks in the department of physiotherapy and rehabilitation after the infection of one of its technicians.  Next day, the team of preventive medicine in the health directorate of Alexandria decided to close Mar Morcos Hospital for fourteen days to sterilize all its departments, entrance and exit doors with home confinement of all workers during fourteen days after the discovery of a case who was transferred consequently to one of the quarantine hospitals.  In "El Bakri" Hospital, doctors requested repeatedly the provision of protection means for the medical staff, especially after transforming the hospital located in Cairo into a quarantine venue for patients of Coronavirus.  In an official statement dated 15 May 2020, doctors declared that some positive cases have appeared among the staff in the previous week affecting physicians, nurses, and employees in the administrative department; these included: two employees respectively responsible of keeping the registers of resident doctors, as well as specialists and advisors; the head of pharmaceutical department, the head of the anti-contamination department, gynecological, intensive care, and general surgery doctors, nurses in intensive care and a worker in the hospital were also contaminated.  Consequently, everyone working in the hospital interacted with cases of COVID-19.  The statement indicated also that all physicians demand the provision of proper protection equipment (PPE) such as highly efficient masks (N95), and yellow or white isolating suits; they requested in addition that training be provided for all doctors and workers on the right use of protection equipment as the overall number of infected among physicians only amounted to 3000 until 16 August 2020 with 169 deaths according to the declarations of Dr. Ibrahim El Zayyat, board member of the General Syndicate of Medicine.

In the same context, medical doctors appealed incessantly the Egyptian Ministry of Health through social media and the electronic portal of their Syndicate to elaborate a health protocol according to the international standards for the protection of physicians to be implemented by all hospitals of the country; they claimed the urgency to surmount the shortage of necessary medical equipment for the prevention from the virus and limit its prevalence among health staff.  Nevertheless, the Ministry response was to deny the false rumors propagated by doctors about the lack of adequate equipment in governmental hospitals or absence of the necessary preventive measures; furthermore, the Ministry took coercive measures towards doctors and their supporting teams under the pretext that they put obstacles before the achievement of desired good performance while working.  Thus, after the spread of COVID-19 in one of the hospitals, the General Authority of Health Care issued its periodical memo number one about the current pandemic crisis defining the arrangements that should be implemented in hospitals to counteract the diffusion of the virus among doctors; these arrangements included the division of work between medical staffs by rotation during the month, i.e. each team would work two consecutive weeks then self-isolating for the two following weeks.  This decision was criticized by the Syndicate of Medicine considering it antagonist with the family life of doctors besides exposing them to dangers due to the lack of decent housing for those obliged to remain in hospitals during two consecutive weeks.  The memo indicated also that corrective measures would be taken against any physician or member of the nursing staff that will be contaminated because this negatively impacts the proper working process and presupposes a contravention of the preventive measures.  How can we imagine that citizens would be punished if they were contaminated, especially if this applies to people who expose themselves to dangers in order to protect the public health of citizens and are consequently more vulnerable than other?  In the same line, Sharqia directorate of health deferred a doctor to investigation after he had posted in the social media a video where he complains from the extreme shortage of prevention equipment, mentioning specifically the lack of masks when dealing with suspected cases; the directorate measure was considered illegal by the Syndicate, aiming at hiding the degraded health condition in governmental hospitals.  Along with this, an Egyptian doctor requested the Ministry of Health to effectuate corona tests every two weeks for all workers in the health sector and apply the test to any citizen complaining from dyspnea; in parallel, an Egyptian nurse called the Ministry of Health to send delegations to hospitals in order to ensure the availability of sufficient protection equipment indicating her fear to have been infected herself.  On the other hand, Wael Sarhan, president of the general trade union of workers in the Authority of First Aid Rescue and Ambulances declared that COVID-19 caused 13 deaths and 220 infected among workers since the rise of the virus in the country, clarifying that these figures include both rescuers and ambulance drivers.  He added that fifty families of these were contaminated with one case of death.  He also noted that the rate of infection in this category of workers is the highest among the health staff if compared with their percentage in the entire health sector.  He requested to transform all ambulances along with the protocol applied for Corona ones with the same medical equipment, together with abolishing paid, emergency or non-rescuing services.

On another note, nurses in "Imbaba Hospital for Tropical Fevers" and Coronavirus cases organized a sit-in of protest against the scarce provision of prevention equipment, especially after the contamination of one of them; during the sit-in, nurses complained from doctors abstaining from contact with patients, leaving the burden of facing the danger on their shoulders.  The Syndicate of Nursing announced the sixth case of death on 13 May with the decease of nurse Sohair Helmy who was working in the unit of burns in "Demerdash" Hospital, after her delegation to "El Obour" quarantine Hospital where she contracted the virus; death of nurse Attiyat Mohamed Arboud was the fifth case while working in "Damanhour Respiratory System" Hospital allocated to the isolation of cases suspected to hold the virus in Beheira governorate.

The present scene regarding the failure of Egyptian governmental hospitals and repeated contamination of health staff is a natural consequence of the policies that reduce financial allocations to the health sector in the public budget in order to increase spending on other sectors; actually, during the current financial year allocation to the health sector amounted to 2,24% which is lower than the percentage prescribed in the Constitutional Article 18 of 2014 which stipulates that the State commits itself to spend not less than 3% of the National Product on health with gradual increase until the percentage becomes compatible with international standards.

In conclusion, we have presently to combat the pandemic and focus on the priorities in a scientific way.  In doing this, the State has to revise the health budget, including salaries of physicians and nursing staff, allocate those a decent indemnity against contamination compatible with the size of risks they have to face in order to encourage doctors working in the governmental sector abstain from emigrating abroad or escaping to the private sector.  There is also urgency of applying the set of comprehensive health security measures that proved to be efficient during the crisis; it is also imperative to reform the health system along with the new system of health security that will be applied all over the country within the next five years; This will limit the Ministry of Health role to that currently played by the preventive health sector in fighting epidemics, protecting health as to reach a comprehensive health coverage as well as ensure that the considerations of equality and social justice are taken in consideration in the design of the health system along with WHO recommendations in 2020.  The crisis we are going through confirm the fact that health is a basic human right, and that the success of efforts in this regard rely on the protection of all social categories, and this is where the State has to play its role.

 

 

Table showing the number of contaminated and deceased

Among health staff between March 15 and September 15 2020

Overall number of contamination among physicians

Over 3000 according to Dr. Ibrahim El Zayyat, board member of the General Syndicate of Medicine (16 August 2020)

Overall number of contamination among nursing staff

Over 4000 according to social media, accuracy of data checked

Overall number of contamination among health technicians

100 cases

Overall number of contamination among workers in the Authority of Ambulances

220 cases

Overall number of deaths among physicians

166 cases

Overall number of deaths among nursing staff

41 cases until 21 July 2020 according to the trade union of nursing

Overall number of deaths among health technicians

28 cases

Overall number of deaths among workers in ambulances

13 cases

 

 

It is important to note that the data included in this table is based on the declarations of the Syndicate of Medicine, the general Authority of First Aid Rescue and Ambulances and the general trade union of workers in health sciences until 15 September 2020; as of the nursing staff, despite the increase of its size by 3.5% during the last three years according to the head of the nursing trade union with an overall staff amounting to 221,06 thousand, there is not regular data issued from the trade union regarding the percentages of contamination and deaths; therefore, we relied on data collection and monitoring information published on electronic sites, especially for the cases of contamination; Dr. Kawthar Mahmoud, head of the trade union of nursing had clarified in an interview with El Youm El Sabe' newspaper published on 21 July 2020 that the number of victims among the nursing staff reached about 41 and the amount disbursed for indemnity amounted to 820 thousand pounds; she added that the trade union had decided to disburse twenty thousand pounds in the cases of death and two thousand pounds for contamination and declared that there was no precise account of the cases of infection.  Dr. Mohamed Badawi, vice secretary general of the federation of medical professions, and secretary general of the dentistry trade unions, announced that the number of indemnity to the amount of twenty thousand pounds – according to the federation decision – covered over 1000 cases, i.e. the disbursement reached a total of twenty million pounds.  Dr. Mohamed Abdel Hamid, treasurer of the Federation and of the Syndicate of Medicine, declared that the Federation didn't receive any request of disbursement for death indemnity set at 50,000 pounds while the number of victims reached 125 according to the available information; he pointed out that the Federation had effectively disbursed compensations for over 600 members although the number of applicants exceeds this figure by 4 to 5 times; however, the papers of those are still under examination and some applications needing to be completed.  Dr. Ahmed Ezzat, treasurer of physiotherapy trade union, stated that the number of infections goes over 250, with three deaths according to the numbers they were able to enumerate; he noted that the trade union does not pay compensations either for contamination or death, but supports its members by paying them an anti-corona indemnity amounting to 2000 pounds which were disbursed for over twenty members, i.e. disbursed overall amounting to 40 thousand pound.  Along with the same trend, Dr. Hussein Abdel Hadi, treasurer of the Dentistry Syndicate, declared that they had received no requests regarding the 50,000 pounds for the five Coronavirus victims among dentists.

Head of the Teachers Syndicate declared that the number of COVID-19 positive cases that applied for compensation amounted to 35 who were paid each ten thousand pounds, i.e. a total of 350 thousand pounds was disbursed.

Looking at the overall amount expended until 21 September 2020, we found that it reached 21 million and 210 thousand pounds while some syndicates declared they did not possess enough information about the infected cases, meaning that the obtained numbers of infected might be by far beyond the reality; however, the data between our hands is a strong indicator about the huge number of victims, especially among the health staff.

II - The informal sector

Statistics estimate that the number of non-organized workers in the informal sector (including workers on a daily base and seasonal workers, with the exception of agricultural workers) represents around 55% of the labor force in Egypt, i.e., the biggest portion of those contributing in the economic process.  Since 2004, the number of non-organized workers registered in the files of Social Security Authority was reduced to around 900,000 while it amounted previously to five million and 700,000 according to a report released by the Ministry of Labor Force in 2017.  As well known, the Ministry does not possess a data base of workers on a daily base, especially with regards to the sector of construction and building that includes 35 thousand entrepreneurship companies employing around 3.5 million of permanent workers covered by social security; in addition, twelve million are working on a seasonal base in this sector, and therefore not affiliated to a specific company and uncovered by the umbrella of social security.  On the other hand, the Ministry of Labor Force collects the amount of 4,5/1000 of the overall benefits of these companies in favor of seasonal labor; actually, no entrepreneur in Egypt can skip from paying these amounts because the condition of working for a governmental or private party is to possess a receipt of payment from the Ministry.  In this context, the president of the construction and building entrepreneurs declared that the decree of establishing an account for seasonal labor was issued in 2006 and implemented in 2011; according to its executive regulation, the amount stated above is to be collected from both governmental and private projects.  He added that the size of money in the account of seasonal workers at the Ministry amounts between 5 and 6 million pounds as the annual amount collected is around 700 million pounds.  CAPMAS report issued in 2019 shows that the overall number of workers is of 27 million with 2.8 million economic companies; the report indicates also that one million are working in the economic enterprises belonging to the State, 8.3 million in the private sector, and over 13.5 million outside economic enterprises.  In addition, 97% of the overall businesses employ less than ten workers.  The report mentions that the number of non-organized workers - either seasonal or on a daily base – without social security coverage .amount to 14 million while workers insured in enterprises amount to six million; and those with work contracts outside enterprises account to 1.8 million.  The report outlines that fishing is the profession occupying the highest rate of participation in economic activities with around 6.5 million workers, while the sector of construction and building includes 3.5 million workers followed by wholesale and retail trade with three million workers, finally the real estate sector employs 29 thousand workers.  According to the data mentioned above, and due to the absence of their inclusion in the official registrars of the State these workers face the following problems:

  • Social and professional marginalization;
  • Limited chances of accessing professional and technical promotion;
  • Lack of health safety and weak social protection;
  • Absence of remuneration for overtime work;
  • Termination without notice or compensation;
  • Deprivation from annual and official holidays as well as sick leave;
  • Deprivation from social protection such as insurance against ageing, disability, death, illness and work injuries.

On the other hand, the main sector informally employing women workers is that of health and social services with 17% of female labor; women in this sector are not covered by health or social security, and their working conditions are incompatible with the terms of the Law regarding working hours, minimum wages, and professional security; most importantly, the State does not possess accurate data about them as they are not ensured under social security. 

A large size of the labor force is concentrated in the sectors of construction and building, real estate activities, water sewerage and recycling; these sectors have witnessed important growing developments during the past years: the sector of construction and building achieved an overall revenue of 214.6 billion pounds during financial year 2017-2018 compared to 195.1 billion for the previous year with a growth percentage of 10%; the sector of real estate activities achieved an overall revenue of 371.7 billion pounds in 2017-2018 compared to 358.5 billion in the previous year with 3.5% growth; as of the water, sewerage and recycling sector, it achieved an overall revenue of 20.8 billion pounds in 2017-2018 compared to 20.2 billion in the previous year with a growth rate of 3.2%.  Therefore, the sector of facilities have achieved in 2017-2018 only an overall national product of 607.1 billion pounds compared to 573.8 billion in the previous year with a growth of 5.8%, contributing thus in financial year 2017-2018 by 16.9% of the overall national product; this percentage is quite high for a single sector; consequently, the real estate sector – and all its labor force - becomes one of the most affected sectors by the pandemic; therefore, the cabinet issued on 11 April 2020 the decision of resuming full work capacity for the sector; such decision raised a general controversy among the sector due to the fear from the pandemic in absence of the provision of professional safety and implementation of health rules, lack of regular analyses, absence of daily sterilization of offices and used tools, besides the huge challenges facing workers in the entire informal sector.  Under these deteriorated conditions, the Coronavirus emerged to worsen their situation and living conditions.  Actually thousands of non-organized workers lost their jobs as one of the pandemic consequences and the preventive measures adopted by the State to limit the expansion of CIVID-19 including the closure of leisure, and touristic settings, as well as open-air markets that deprived street vendors from their means of income with their majority uncovered by social, health or unemployment security protection.  There is also the eternal problem of domestic workers who are excluded from the protection of both current Labor Law and draft new Labor Law under discussion, exposing them to severe living conditions.  We also note the issuance of some official decision that were not actually implemented; this happened with the ministerial decree Number 776/2020 about the establishment of a committee responsible of collecting data regarding the labor force affected by the economic repercussions of the pandemic.  The decision led to a state of chaos as many workers were unable to register their information besides the ambiguity concerning who was or was not addressed by the decision.  Within this context, the Ministry of Labor Force announced that it will disburse a grant of 500 pounds as an exceptional assistance for the non-organized labor registered in its data base and will open the door to unregistered workers to register through an electronic link; however, the link is perpetually not working.  This illustrates the incompetence of the electronic infrastructure in this Ministry, and consequently the impossibility to activate the decision, leading to the deprivation of the supposed beneficiaries; moreover, vagueness and confusion are prevailing among citizens, especially that the decision concerns a wide category of non-organized workers who will not be able to benefit from the grant representing despite its modesty the only source of income to meet solely the daily needs of nutrition for them and their families; and this is simply due to the incapability of registering.

III - The diverse fields of work in the private sector

Field to tourism

The field of tourism is the most prominent sector affected economically by the pandemic and its duration; this is exacerbated by the declarations confirming that the recovery of the sector will last between 10 and 34.9 months after end of the crisis, i.e. at the average of 19.4 months; such period is too long for a sector that represented recently around 12% of the overall national product and produced around one billion dollars monthly.  Actually, tourism witnessed a noticeable progress in the rate of revenues during past years with an overall of 13.3 billion dollars in 2019 compared to 11,6 billion in 2018 with a growth rate of nearly 12.5% and an increase of 67% compared with 2016 where revenues amounted to 2.5 billion dollars only according to the declarations of the Central Bank of Egypt.  It is worth mentioning the declaration of the "Alliance of Workers in Tourism" on April 6 that all touristic and hotel facilities received a letter from the Ministry of Tourism indicating that an agreement was concluded with the "Egyptian Federation of Chambers of Tourism" stating that the labor force wouldn't be exposed to exclusion or termination in order to retain skilled and trained workers.  In the same time, several exhibitions and important conferences that are usually booked the preceding year were canceled; this practically means that tourism will likely lose probable agreements for next years, as declared by Mohamed Ma'it, Minister of Finances to the website "Enterprise".  Therefore, the sector was exposed to an important crisis described by the International Organization of Tourism to be the most severe one over the past twenty years as it was highly affected at the economic level, especially for workers whose number is officially estimated to reach three million Egyptians; according to formal statistics, around 200,000 of these workers lost their jobs due to the preventive measures declared by the State since the beginning of the crisis; these measures included the closure of hotels, companies, restaurants, bazars, and coffee shops.  In addition to thousands of workers on a daily base in touristic services; the president of touristic guides' trade union declared that 60% of workers in this field are free-lance, i.e., paid on a daily base, and they are the most affected by the crisis; while they were effectively working before the pandemic, many of them will find themselves without jobs if the situation would last for long, because any owner of a touristic enterprise won't be able to pay salaries more than two months without obtaining revenues; meanwhile, some businessmen in the field of tourist adopted prompt measures including:

  • Reduction of workers' numbers or total expulsion of important numbers;
  • Grant open ended unpaid holidays;
  • Grant extended holidays to workers deducted from their annual vacations.

Following are the cases monitored and documented by CTUWS confirming the above measures applied by business owners in this sector since the spread of Coronavirus until 15 September 2020.

According to social media and to the information released by the Forum of Dialogue for Development and Human Rights on its website "Watani", the worst affected governorates were the Red Sea that registers 59% of workers' complaints, followed by Cairo with 21%, Giza with 13% and South Sinai with approximately 8%.

  • Open ended holidays and collective termination
  1. The Croup of companies Gas belonging to businessman Hamed El Shiyati took the decision mid-March 2020 to grant open ended holidays without pay to 600 workers;
  2. The administration of El Gouna Company for touristic development belonging owned by Samih Sawiris decided mid-March 2020 to grant open holidays for some of its staff, end work contracts and obtain signature on termination forms for about 700 workers;
  3. The administration of Grand Group (which is a chain of hotels in Hurgada and Sharm El Sheikh) belonging to businessman Samir Abdel Fattah decided end of March 2020 to give unpaid open ended holidays for the holders of permanent work contracts; it was impossible for the monitoring staff to identify the number of workers affected by this decision due to the several venues affiliated to the group in both settings;
  4. The same as above was replicated by the administration of Sun Rise Group for hotels and touristic villages belonging to businessman Hossam El Shaer by granting open ended holidays and ending temporary work contracts for around 500 workers; this happened also approximately by the end of March;
  5. Meanwhile, tens of companies providing touristic services (such as transports, bazars, and organizers of journeys) were lockdown and their employees granted unpaid open ended holidays; these companies employ around 2000 persons in Hurgada and a similar number in Sharm El Sheikh;
  6. The administration of El Mosafer Company of transport active in the field of booking tickets and hotels. belonging to a Saoudi and an Indian businessmen adopted on March 25 the decision to grant employees unpaid open ended holidays until the crisis is over; number of workers is estimated to reach 350;
  7. On the first of April, International Service Company for Touristic Services belonging to businessman Khaled El Minawi closed its doors for an indefinite period without indemnity for workers and employees estimated at fifty;
  8. Travco Company for Tourism belonging to businessman Hamed El Shiyati reduced the salaries of all employees by 25% and all administrative staff and engineers by 50% besides granting tens of workers unpaid holidays:
  9. A collective complaint registered at El Ahram police station under Number 5930/2020 was registered by 25 workers in Hotel Mercure El Haram stating that they were unjustly terminated following Coronavirus pandemic;
  10. Complaint of workers in Hurgada Golden Five Hotel for the liquidation of the labor force; in addition, those who didn't have a balance of holidays were forced to take unpaid leave; 75% only of the salary for the month of March was released to each worker for all the due months; during last April, and as a result of the administration stubbornness in disbursing three months of salaries, workers deposited a complaint at the police station;
  11. Complaints of workers and employees in the Group of Hotels La Branda in Makadi Bay, southern of Hurgada city on the Red Sea due to the termination of workers by administrative decision; these workers organized a peaceful sit-in during March 2020 addressing number of requests to the administration related to the protection of their rights during the crisis;
  12. Complaint from workers in Hotel Hotlix (Marina Beach) to the governor of the Red Sea against the administration that forced workers during the month of April to present their resignation;
  13. Travel Choice for Tourism got rid of over twenty workers by abstaining from renewing their contracts and informing them that their last day of work would be May 3 2020;
  14. Complaint by workers in Long Beach Hotel in Hurgada affiliated to Edit Company of Tourism for granting them three months leave, obliging employees to sign a one month contract instead of one year as usually done; additionally, salaries of April were reduced by 50% without prior notice and social security fees deducted in totality from the salaries including employee and employer share;
  15. Workers in Cairo Semiramis Hotel deposited a complaint addressed to the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities about the transgression of the President's decision regarding the current crisis, i.e., the abstention of reducing salaries which were in fact reduced by the Hotel administration during the month of April;
  16. Complaint of workers in one of the hotels located in the fifth settlement, New Cairo where workers were threatened from termination and some of them forced to present a resignation after a meeting with the administration requesting collective resignations although the duration of their contracts lasts until next December; after workers filed a complaint Number 2482 at the corresponding police station on 31st of March, the administration attempted a negotiation by granting them three days leave; however, when they returned back to work they were considered abstaining from work voluntarily which led them to file a second complaint Number 2572 on April 4 2020;
  17. All workers in Marina Abu Suma Hotel in Safaga were terminated on May 5, and other administrative employees granted unpaid leave; April due salaries were not paid and the administration argued that they will receive their dues when the Fund would disburse the assistance aid;
  18. In El Mosafer Sierra Company, employees were prevented to enter in the headquarters; following the creation of a crowd of workers, they succeeded to enter in order to bargain with the administration; however, this was useless and pushed workers resorting to the police to document the situation; finally, the lawyer of the legal department bargained with workers telling them to take the available amount and ratify the end of service documents, declaring the following: "otherwise, go to hell and find out how much the law will help you".

 

  • Reducing working days and salaries or abstention from disbursing wages
  1. The Group of Pyramids Hotels issued an administrative decree on May 1st stating that the working days will be reduced by 25% beginning present date until the situation improves; in addition, workers whose balance of holidays was nil until end of 2020 were considered useless and had to apply for unpaid leave and pay their own share of fees and that of the employer to the Authority of Social Security, besides abstention from renewing expired work contracts until things become better;
  2. Complaint of workers and employees in Gawharat El Ahram Hotel located in Pyramids' Avenue against the administration decision to grant them a month of unpaid leave from 24 March to 24 April 2020;
  3. Hotel Radison Blue in Cairo forced its personnel to work twelve hours per day without holidays except one day-off weekly while working hours should amount to eight only, besides reducing 40% from their basic salary;
  4. Complaint of all workers in the Grand Hotel Group and Grand Makadi owned by Samir Abdel Fattah and sons for abstaining from disbursing salaries; following this complaint, the General Attorney issued the decision to precautionary sequestrate businessman Mohamed Samir Abdel Fattah, his brother and father at their place of residency; the three men pledged to Red Sea governor that they would pay their dues to the workers who had claimed for this during three months;
  5. Complaint of workers in Nubia Aqua Beach Hotel in Hurgada for having obtained their salaries for the month of March only, and been obliged to take unpaid leave; the Hotel administration replied that workers were absent from work;
  6. Complaint of workers in Samra Bay Hotel in Hurgada for not obtaining their salary for the month of March;
  7. Complaint from workers in Panorama Hotel in Hurgada owned by businessman Dr. Reda Rezeik as an important number of them have not received their salaries for the months of March and April;
  8. Sun Rise group owned by Hossam El Shaer reduced the salaries that amounted to 500 pounds only for the month of April besides three month of delay in disbursing their dues;
  9. Complaint from workers in Dreams Beach Hotel in Sharm El Sheikh for not obtaining their salary for the month of April;
  10. Complaint of workers in Jolie Beach Hotel (previously Nada Hotel) in Marsa Alam for not obtaining their salary of March;

 

  • Actions of protest
  1. 800 families of workers in Red Sea motorboats addressed an appeal to the President of the Republic to be treated equally with the touristic sector, indicating that the financial aid allocated by the Emergency Fund excluded them; their request was to be considered similarly with workers in touristic facilities, bazars, and divers;
  2. Employees of the Four Seasons Hotel in Giza organized a protest sit-in on 14 May 2020 after a 12% cut from their salaries and being forced to work without preventive precautions; this Hotel is owned by the Qatari Faycal Ibn Athem Al Thani and administered by Tarek El Sayed; after the sit-in, the administration abolished its decision of calling workers to return back to work without preventive measures and granted them a holiday until Bairam Feast;

Therefore, workers are the biggest losers, disoriented between the contradictory opinions declared by the chambers of tourism and the government; while the five chambers of tourism (companies, hotels, touristic facilities, diving and touristic gadgets) requested from the government to assume the salaries of workers through the Emergency Fund affiliated to the Ministry of Labor Force, especially that the touristic sector contributes by 2% of its budget, the government demanded the chambers of tourism to endorse their responsibility towards their members during the present crisis affecting the tourism sector; the government maintains that these entities possess immense amounts exceeding 900 million pounds in addition to their share in the Fund for Pilgrimage; the government asserts that they are capable of giving support to members during the current period; moreover, the government claims that the amounts mentioned before belong to the members and the role of boards is to protect the interests of companies, hotels and all workers in the sector.  In parallel with this debate, the Emergency Fund president (position occupied by the present Minister of Labor Force) declared that 250 thousand workers applied for aid from the Fund.

Sector of aviation

In the context of the governmental decision to stop air flights, the national company "EgyptAir" predicted that its losses would reach 2.25 billion pounds; in addition, the company had already lost 200 flights weekly with the decision of several countries to halt their flights to Egypt after the emergence of Coronavirus; international and regional reports indicate disastrous losses in this sector due to the size of air trips stopped between countries worldwide, estimating that the damages in revenues by the end of the year would exceed 250 billion dollars globally, including 23 billion for the Middle East region alone equivalent to 39% of this industry benefits; according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) the reimbursement of tickets has increased by 75% in the Middle East during the period February 1st till mid-March with cancelation of 16,000 flights in the region since end of January; this resulted in concrete damages worldwide for aviation companies estimated at 7.2 billion dollars until 11 March 2020 with predictions to reach 250 billion dollars by the end of 2020; IATA also indicated that the Egyptian aviation companies are expected to lose around 1.6 billion dollars as a consequence of the predicted decrease in the number of travellers by 9.5 person; this in turn is threatening 205,560 jobs in the sector besides the danger of an important deficit for the Egyptian economy in 2020 (2.4 billion dollars).  Despite the lack of statistics, news disseminate in the social media confirm that hundreds of workers in aviation companies have lost their jobs with collective termination taking place mainly in the field of services and lower administrative positions.

The industrial private sector

Despite all the declarations of State responsible about the necessity to retain the labor force, abstain from reducing salaries, and apply all the preventive measures at the work place, decisions adopted by business owners were contradictory, totally ignoring the Labor Law and international conventions.  The following cases detail the extreme damages encountered by workers rapidly impacting their socio-economic status:

  • Open-ended holidays and collective termination
  1. In Alexandria, the chain of cake shops Abu Omar decided to definitely terminate the service of 30 workers and grant thirty others unpaid open-ended leave; this chain of shops has thirty branches of sales in the various districts of Alexandria, and the number of employed in the factory and workers amount to 200;
  2. An important number of small factories for ready-made garments in Alexandria stopped their activities and granted their workers unpaid leave; number of workers in these workshops is estimated at 300;
  3. In Port-Said, the majority of companies in the investment zone gave their workers a two-week vacation beginning March 15 to be deducted from their annual holidays; on April 1st, companies issued the decision to suspend work until further notice to be resumed on the 8th of April with the same deduction as before;
  4. Firestone Company in Alexandria free zone terminated 200 workers on 27 March 2020 upon Coronavirus crisis and the curfew imposed in the country;
  5. Union Air Group decided the suspension of work and production for one week beginning March 22 in a number of factories with high density of workers (butane, air condition, fridges, glass, and factories in the Red Sea) with deduction of these days from their balance of due days-off;
  6. The Arab Real Estate Company (ARCO), one of City Stars companies, addressed a letter through the human resources department to Mr. Khaled Abu Bakr, director of one of the company departments; the letter expressed gratitude and respect and explained that this was his last day of work in the company that had decided to manage without him as part of its new policy aiming at rationalizing expenses and restructuring the labor force.

Mr. Abu Bakr filed a complaint at the police station to document the fact and went to file another complaint at the labor bureau; however, he discovered that the latter was in vacation for Coronavirus.  He also registered his complaint on the site of the Cabinet allocated to citizens' grievances which deferred it to the central committee of labor force;

  1. In Plaza company from Port-Said investment zone, the administration requested 40 workers on April 4 to resume work; however, workers were shocked by the decision conveyed by the administration to end the work contracts of forty workers among which some of these contracts were about to expire while others were still valid until the end of the year; the administration asked these workers to sign a resignation, but they refused to do so and filed a process-verbal at the police station;
  2. The same happened with Ismailia factory belonging to the company where number of temporary work contracts were ended;
  3. Plaza Factory from Port-Said investment zone announced through loud speakers that compulsory leave was decided for two weeks beginning April 5 to be deducted from workers' balance of due days-off; in case of negative credit, deduction from workers' salaries would be implemented; in addition, the factory terminated thirty workers by closing their contracts end of March without complying with the Law requesting to send notification letters by certified mail to fired workers; when these went to governmental parties, they found the labor bureau closed;
  4. Port-Said "El Nahr El Khaled" Company for ready-made garments refused to disburse March salaries of 150 workers before signing resignations as a preamble to terminate contracts and get rid of them;
  5. The district of small projects southern Port-Said witnessed a lockdown of approximately 80% of its factories employing each between 20 and 60 workers; these factories of ready-made garments amount to 58 with a labor force estimated to range from 2000 to 3000 thousand workers;
  6. In Ismailia investment zone, Enpi Company for ready-made garments terminated 550 workers with no valid reason rather than reducing the labor force; the company is owned by an Indian investor employing around 3000 workers;
  7. Gad chain of restaurants in Alexandria owned by Mostafa and Emad Gad decided to close their shops, manage without employees, and abstain from paying their dues;
  8. In line with Firestone, Sweet Girl Companies in the third industrial zone of Borg El Arab, Three Stars Company, Black Gamal and the Indian Company of Alexandria free zone, terminated important number of workers without any reaction or follow-up on behalf of the labor bureau;
  9. Emeco Company for ready-made garments in Medinat Nasr free zone forced number of directors and employees to sign their resignation and decided to give unpaid leave for the rest of workers in the factory;
  10. Orascom Company in charge of constructing El Waraq subway line prevented workers on a daily base who were over sixty years old to enter in the site and expulsed them under the pretext of fearing the dissemination of COVID-19; these were expelled without disbursement of their dues or any indemnity; the responsible of the building site said literally that this was "to avoid their death in the site which would cost the company the price of their funerals and payment of a compensation".  This happens while some workers have been serving for almost ten years and are paid only sixty pounds per day, i.e. less than the official minimum wages; furthermore, the Company had succeeded to gain millions of pounds from their work; however, all these factors did not intervene in their favor for the business owners.  Some workers sent complaints to the Company's partners in the Investment Bank until they learned that local partners of the Bank had not to comply with the international labor standards;
  11. Lockdown of 27 factories in Port-Said free zone because of Coronavirus; 21 factories suspended work for an open-ended period beginning April 1st; the decision was motivated by the fear of contamination from the labor force coming from other governorates such as Sharkia, Damietta, and Daqahlia, and the high density of people inside factories; another reason was the stop of export orders due to the closure of air and maritime spaces; as of the remaining six factories, they work  with about 15% of their capacity after having obliged the majority of workers to take open-ended vacations;
  12. The International Group of Modern Paintings in Borg El Arab district of Alexandria took the initiative on 30 June 2020 to terminate abusively 35 workers without apparent reason, pushing workers to record a complaint at Borg El Arab police station against the company's administration; the details of the story return back to the month of May when all incentives were cut from salaries including the indemnities for nature of work and for meals; furthermore, the administration deducted 15% from the basic salaries pushing thus workers to present a complaint to the labor bureau in Alexandria because Borg El Arab bureau refused to receive their claim; workers were requested to file their complaint through the electronic site of Alexandria directorate of labor force, which they did under number 2526224 dated May 3;
  13. American Uber Technologies Company' application for providing smart transport through mobile resulted in the termination of 3700 full-time employees, with decreased number of travellers in parallel due to the pandemic crisis; in addition, the company decided to freeze new nominations for the current period; termination of employees comes within the plan to rationalize operational expenses, in addition to uncertainty about the future and its impact on Uber;
  14. On 16 May 2020, over 200 employees and workers at Ghabbour Company of Cars addressed an appeal to responsible in the government requesting their intervention to solve their problem after having been fired arbitrarily beside the reduction of the remaining workers' salaries by 20%; the deducted amounts were donated to the State presented as a contribution of the Company in support the fight against the repercussions of Coronavirus crisis.  One of the abusively fired said that responsible at Ghabbour Company informed him and others – without prior notice - they were terminated although they had been hired less than a year ago; the worker added: "if they proposed us a reduction of salary we would have accepted, but abolishing the living earnings this way is unjust; I personally have a family and children and if I search for work anywhere else, nobody will employ me under the current circumstances; where should I go now?";
  15. In Gebril Alexandria Factory for underwear owned by businessman Sherif Gebril, the management decided to stop activities for an indefinite period and get rid from all workers; fifty workers were terminated and the factory locked down after having requested from workers to return back they cards of health insurance in order to stop the deductions of social security;
  16. The administration of Cairo Cotton Center in Qalioub city, governorate of Qalioubia - owned by businessman Magdi Tolba and Co. – adopted the decision of reducing its labor force and fired 350 workers on April 30; we note here that these were newly hired before three to six months and some of them were infected by COVID-19;
  17. Several factories and contracting companies in the village of Beni Affan, governorate of Beni Swaif, terminated an important number of workers beginning April 5 and granted others obligatory vacations with half salary; this was due to the seventeen cases of Coronavirus that appeared in the village and led to the isolation of their houses partly.  Workers requested from the companies' administration to be granted paid leave or allow them to resume work under preventive measures because of their incapacity of meeting living expenses without income;

 

  • Open-ended holidays and reduction of salaries
  1. Lotus Group for ready-made garments located in Port-Said investment zone put the factory workers on leave with deduction of 50% from their salaries during the imposed days-off;
  2. Euro Tex Company in Port-Said, owned by a Kuwaiti woman investor pursued work, violating thus the preventive measures, and merged the three shifts of work, causing a great wave of anger among workers amounting to 1600 who become thus exposed to high risk of contamination;
  3. The Golden Crescent and Star Group decided in the tenth of Ramadan city to have two shifts working simultaneously from 4 pm to 8 am in order to go round the official hours of curfew enacted by the government; this happened without paying any over-time to workers; long hours of work were followed by a compulsory day-off deducted from their balance of due days-off ;
  4. The management of Orgello Factory for ready-made garments in Ismailia investment zone decided to give workers ten days-off, five of them to be deducted from their balance of holidays;
  5. In the industrial Sadat city, New Line Back Company for the production of cartons decided to merge the second and third shifts to have the factory working from 4 pm until eight next day morning without compensating workers for these extra working hours; the overall labor force is composed of 500 workers with 350 in the second and third shifts; the decision caused a very heavy crowd inside the setting exposing workers to high risks of infection;
  6. Abu El Nasr Factory for Cartons in the industrial zone of Menoufia owned to businessman Hamad Bashir works in full capacity for an entire day followed by a day-off deducted from the balance of workers' due days-off:
  7. Eemar Company informed its employees of several decisions adopted in the context of Coronavirus; while pursuing activities and programs: employees were ordered to work from home with the implementation of a new scale of salaries to be applied on all the levels of workers in the companies affiliated to Eemar Real Estate Group beginning 1st of April 2020; this meant the reduction of the gross salary by 50% for the high management level and by 30% for employees in the fourth to sixth levels; as of employees granted periods of vacation, they would receive only 15% of the gross salary;
  8. Engineers Consulting Group forced its employees to donate part of their salaries because of the pandemic that caused a decrease in the size of projects; additionally, the company discontinued the application of preventive measures enacted by the government; these decisions provoked a state of anger among employees.  According to engineer Amr Adel on Facebook: "Engineers Consulting Group - which is one of the biggest companies of engineering - decided shamefully to force its employees going to work every day; the worse is that a decree was distributed ordering staff to sign this paper: "you either sign that you accept to donate part of your salary to the company or you are terminated"; the pretext was the scarcity of projects; despite the millions of benefits obtained; they oblige people going to work besides reducing their poor salaries, "otherwise you can leave";
  9. Workers in El Thulathya Dyehouse owned by businessman Hatem Ouda and former candidate to the Parliament for Eastern district of Shubra El Khayma, begun a strike on April 15 because they had not been paid for two consecutive months with no valid reason or justification as they were pursuing work and increasing the size of production; workers mentioned that they requested their salaries in order to cope with the deteriorated surrounding conditions even before the current crisis, but the factory owner refused to accept work stoppage.  Workers filed complaints before security forces; however, the factory management denied all these facts stating that workers have received in addition a bag of nutrition goods for the month of Ramadan; nevertheless, workers declared that this was an annual gift offered by one of the clients.
  10. The Turkish Company of Textiles in Damietta free zones obliged all its workers, technicians and administrative employees to work in full capacity, turning round the curfew by organizing two shifts: first one of eight hours, and second one of sixteen compulsory hours without any compensation except a day-off; the company continued to apply this policy without implementing any preventive measures such as regular medical examination, isolation of the infected people or granting them a holiday, despite the contamination of three workers;
  11. High Tech for Textiles Company located in El Amereya free zone, Alexandria was locked down and granted workers a two-months holidays ending on the 15th of June during which they will obtain half salaries; the number of workers is estimated at 150;
  12. Regina Group at El Sadat city, governorate of Menoufia, including three industrial enterprises employing one thousand workers conducted its operations with two shifts only: the first one from 8 am to 4 pm, and the second one following until 8 am next day; preventive measures were limited to sterilize workers at the entrance by spraying alcohol on their clothes and hands within absence of masks or adequate distancing exposing them to the risk of infection;
  13. The administration board of Honeywell Company for Nutrition Industries in the 10th of Ramadan city decided to stop the buses transporting workers daily to the work place, paying them instead a ridiculous indemnity to avoid suspending the production process; this decision neglected the fact that the miserable incentive wouldn't be sufficient for the transport of workers residing in areas located far away beside the risk of resorting to public transports under the current crisis;
  14. Metco Company of ready-made suits in Port-Said investment zone locked down and granted workers amounting to one thousand an open-end holiday after having disbursed half salaries; this measure was met by protests and workers filed a complaint at the labor bureau on 7May 2020.

 

Private sector services

  1. Workers and employees in Zamalek Sporting Club requested the administration on April 21 to obtain their salaries for the month of March, especially that the month of Ramadan was close and everybody was affected by the difficult surrounding situation; they were also expecting to receive the bonus usually allocated for the month of Ramadan; despite the sit-in in front of the Club, nobody from the administration responded to their claims;
  2. Helwan branch of Resala Charity Association imposed vacations to the department of in-kind collection which was stopped from operating by the curfew; according to Mahmoud Hafez. head of this department, and Ali Gamal, one of the collectors, the holiday would last for two whole weeks (twelve working days) without pay or indemnity because the salary of in-kind collectors represents a certain percentage of the donations collected;
  3. Notre Dame School in Aswan terminated eighty teachers, supervisors and cleaning workers because of the pandemic, obliging them to sign letters of resignation, and granting others unpaid leave; this was justified by the economic collapse due to COVID-19 while all students' parents had already paid the school fees.  Fired personnel didn't receive their end of services bonuses, and payments were restricted to March salary.  Before the crisis, the school had requested teachers to sign a fictive resignation under the pretext of avoiding problems if someone accused the administration of abstaining from registering teachers at the Authority of Social Security; these fictive resignations were used during the crisis and the school threatened those who would dare complaining to request their deprivation from teaching following school year;
  4. El Mostaqbal private schools in Aswan broke off the contracts of temporary teachers, and forced others to resign under the pretext of lacking sufficient resources to disburse their salaries ranging between 900 and 1300 pounds as a consequence of Coronavirus; however, all students' parents had already paid school fees; the school decided also to give teachers unpaid holidays until the month of December during which they are forced to give lessons and follow-up the educational process through internet and distance learning;
  5. During the month of March, Aswan University got rid of hundreds of workers on a daily base whose number exceeds that of appointed ones; this happened upon stopping courses under the impact of COVID-19; according to one of the testimonies, the worker was fired since the beginning of the crisis because his work was related to teaching and he had no appointment; he added that the number of temporary workers was over 1500 although some of them were serving the university for fifteen years in the hope of becoming part of the appointed staff; nevertheless they were abusively terminated regardless the harsh living conditions they were experimenting; he also declared that their salaries did not exceed 350 pounds with deductions for the social security and pensions though they discovered that they were not registered under this system according to the office of social security; the university justification is that they were registered as numbers not as individuals;
  6. British International College in Cairo obliged seven teachers in the New Cairo branch to present a resignation against obtaining their monthly salaries; this happened while teachers fulfill the responsibility of pursuing distance learning and students' parents have already paid school fees.  On March 29, in their way to be paid the teachers were confronted with the administration tergiversation pushing them to resign in order to diminish the size of staff teachers because of Coronavirus; the school blocked March salary of one teacher who refused to sign a resignation and the terminated group filed a complaint at the administration of education that was not responsive;
  7. Gezira Sporting Youth Center issued decision number 50 dated 14 May 2020 considering that all the technical, managerial and medical apparatus allocated to sports' teams for the season 2019-2020 are resigning beginning 16 May 2020 until the appointment of similar apparatus for season 2020-2021; centers' responsible declared that the decision resulted from the prevailing conditions in the country leading to close the Center;
  8. Despite the difficult situation affecting cleaning workers with the pandemic spread, Aga city council in Dakahliya governorate abstained from disbursing the salaries of these workers amounting to 367;
  9. Almaza branch of Cook D'or Company decided to freeze without pay all the workers appointed since January 2020 and explained that this situation would last until the end of COVID-19 crisis.

 

  • Actions of protest in the context of the crisis

In several settings, workers protested against businessmen exploitation of the crisis to violate their rights:

  1. On 16 August, 5000 workers from TC Company of Clothes in El-Obour city assembled announcing they were going into strike for the deduction of the Feast days-off from their salaries and the increase of working hours, requesting the return back to the previous working system;
  2. On 10 August 2020, the trade union of workers in National Cement Company – under liquidation – addressed a memo to the prime-minister Mostafa Madbuli, requesting to prompt the disbursement of workers' dues; it is important to note that decision of liquidation was adopted since one year and a half and until now the Company didn't finish from disbursing 50% of these dues, paying monthly or every quarter the dues of twenty workers; the overall amount expended until now is 420 million pounds for 1100 workers while the remaining labor force reaches 9000;
  3. Workers in El Nil Company for insulating material in Mex, Alexandria observed an open-ended sit-in on July 4 in protest of the administration neglect of conducting real serious negotiations about their demands; workers had repeatedly requested answers to the claim of their share of benefits usually disbursed every three years after the deadline was out-passed; in addition, number of workers in the department of production who were appointed nearly one year ago were not registered under the scheme of health care despite the serious risks they are exposed to, especially in dealing with carcinogenic products including chemical steam;
  4. Workers in Sasco Factory organized a rotating four-day sit-in beginnings May 2020 in protest against the factory lockdown, and the pressures of the owner to present their resignations without obtaining their end of service dues; one of the workers who refused to publish his name declared that the number of those under contract and benefitting from social security amounted to fifteen when there are thirty others working on a daily base beside twenty others fired following Coronavirus crisis;
  5. Workers from the National Factory for iron industries in Ain El Sokhna went on strike for not receiving their incentives and the dues from the Complementary Fund; a worker who preferred to remain anonymous declared that the Company owned by Onsi Sawiris adopted an arbitrary attitude towards them all over the last period and intentionally blocked and sometimes canceled their financial dues;
  6. Workers in Misr Company for spinning and weaving in Shebin El Kom, governorate of Menoufia organized a sit-in in the beginnings of September in front of the administration rest house in protest against the abolition of Feast bonuses including the clinic indemnity under the Coronavirus pretext; 41 workers were arrested before being released against guarantee of their place of residency and after having spent fifteen days in preventive detention;
  7. 4500 workers of the Investment Company for ready-made garments in Ismailia free zone entered into strike on March 22; the strike lasted for two days and was due to the administration refusal of implementing the prime-minister decree decreasing the number of workers present together in the governmental and public sectors until end of March; the management argued that the decree was not applicable to their case;
  8. Workers in the Authority of Public Transports, Madinet Nasr branch engaged on March 31 in a strike opposing the Authority decision to decrease the revenues' indemnities to the quarter and disburse only 25% of the amount for the period 1-19 March 2020 during which workers were requested to work alternative days in compliance with the curfew until the end of the crisis.  Upon the administration resolution of disbursing 25% of March and 50% of April incentives against the condition of resuming work,  workers stopped the strike on April 2 although this arrangement was heavily cutting from their rights, especially that April benefits are expected to be much lesser than those of March as a result of the rotating days system of work; actually, the incentives obtained by drivers and money collectors in this Authority represent 60% of their overall wages; consequently, the latest decision would deeply affect these incomes;  The Authority head justified the decision by the scarcity of achieved revenues during the period beginning from 19 March 2020;
  9. Sitcor Company of spinning in Borg El Arab industrial zone, Alexandria maintained its stubbornness against workers who were pursuing their sit-in inside the company, requesting their financial rights and resuming work that was stopped without reason except the management determination of liquidation under the pretext of Coronavirus crisis and the deteriorated economic situation of the enterprise, despite having achieved benefits during previous years. The lockdown was presented as a means to undertake improvements in the setting; however, the fact is that workers' payments after liquidation were equivalent to 30% of the salary of their dues before closure.  The administration refused negotiations with workers, until governmental bodies pressured for the implementation of Law and conduction of the bargaining; nevertheless, discussions between the two sides ended by failure; a meeting took place between workers' representatives and owners of the company on June 18 during which the administration representative refused the demands of workers; these included: resuming work and paying the differences of salaries subsequent to the cuts practiced by the management and affecting around 300 workers; he also informed them of the owners' intention to liquidate the company and terminate workers against one month of compensation for every year of work; this proposal was rejected by workers who expressed determination of resuming work or implementing the terms of the Law by presenting concrete and real reasons for liquidation, and consequently disburse an end of service equivalent to two month per year of work in addition to all other financial dues; finally, workers decided to pursue their sit-in inside the company.

 

  • Available monitored cases of contamination and deaths from COVID-19 among workers

The first cases of infection were discovered in Egypt beginnings of March, with twelve workers infected on a touristic boat cruising between Luxor and Aswan in Upper Egypt; actually, there were tourists from various nationalities on board of the boat and this discovery marks the announcement of the pandemic emergence in the country.

In this context, CTUWS monitored an important number of contaminations and some deaths in various work sectors and settings as well as the attitude of companies administrations that ranged between: implementation of preventive measures, granting workers leaves of confinement, neglect of the facts and determination to pursue work despite the risks resulting from such decision;

  1. On April 6, a decision was issued to lockdown two factories of ready-made garments in Kafr El Dawar city after two cases of infection appeared in these settings; this preventive measure was adopted to alleviate the virus spread, identify all the people interacting with the two workers and isolating them at home forty days for the purpose of follow-up and referral to hospitals in case contamination was proved;
  2. Enpi Company declared that one of its workers was affected by COVID-19 as a result of interacting with his physician sister working at the Cancer Institute; The 6th of April Corona tests of the man were positive while he was on official leave since the 25th of March;
  3. Nestle Company administration announced on April 21 in an internal memo that one of its workers was deceased on April 11 under the impact of COVID-19; before his death, the worker was under treatment and did not come to the factory of dried elements where he was working.  The memo also stated that the company would undertake all the necessary tests to colleagues who were in contact with the deceased worker in order to detect any contamination and keep those at home until the release of tests' results; moreover, work in the factory of dried elements would be suspended until being cleaned and sterilized under the supervision of the Ministry of Health and reopened pending on the Ministry's approval after the successful end of cleaning and sterilization; in a registered voice message, the company's head of workers requested his colleagues to show solidarity with their work place as the company will never forget who took a positive stand and who adopted another path??
  4. Leccico Misr Factory for pottery administration closed temporarily the setting in Borg El Arab for fourteen days on 14 April 2020 to comply with the Ministry of Health directives after two cases were diagnosed  positive; this was announced through a statement, and the company requested from workers to comply with home isolation during fourteen days;
  5. Alexandria health office decided on April 15 to close fourteen days one of the factories affiliated to Nile Linen Group of textiles; the decision occurred after an engineer was found positive; the company had previously resumed work on the 11th of April after holidays since the 7th when an administrative employee was identified contaminated; however, closure had to be repeated;
  6. Othman Company for clothes locked down its factory since 19 April until the end of Bairam Feast on May 28 after several complaint from Mehallah El Kobra citizens about the important number of workers from the villages of El Hayatem and Saft Turab; these villages were totally isolated by order of the Egyptian police, preventing any outside contact of their residents among which number of infections are not identified; the number of workers in the factory is estimated at 2000 who obtained only their basic salary during the period of closure;
  7. Corona tests conducted for twelve workers in Belle Egypte La Vache qui Rit Factory in the tenth of Ramadan city revealed their contamination; these workers were deferred by the Ministry of Health to quarantine hospitals where their health status was discovered progressively; this forced the company administration to stop production completely and grant holidays to the rest of workers amounting to 1500 distributed between employees in the factory, and sales points; the decision was to enable workers implementing total home confinement; as of the affected workers, their places of residency vary between the villages of El Saadassa and El Khosswa, El Matager district, and Aleem village, all affiliated to Belbeis county town; others belong of El Khors village from Minia El Kamh county town; such situation created a state of panicking and resulted in the confinement of over 400 people from 25 different households; 
  8. Omega Ceramic Factory in the 10th of Ramadan city, Sharkia governorate with a capacity of over one thousand workers was closed down after evidence of a worker contamination by Coronavirus; the administration granted all workers fourteen days of paid leave as this factory usually operates daily in full capacity and workers are crowded in buses without masks as was shown in a video disseminated on Cairo24 site; following these bus trips, workers return back to their homes situated in the governorate county towns of Belbeis and Abu Hammad.  Shaaban Abdallah El Sayed, thirty years old, is one of the workers affected by the pandemic and was transferred to Tama El Amdeed hospital of isolation; in addition, twelve houses including nineteen households of ninety individuals were isolated;
  9. Carrefour chain of super markets announced on April 20 the contamination of a worker in Dandy Mall branch and published a communiqué stating that the worker was confined in home isolation, preventive measures adopted with people in contact with the case, and ensuring that the shop continued  to operate normally;
  10. After the death of a worker and the manifestation of several cases of infection by COVID-19 among workers in Egypt Foods Factory located in the industrial zone of Quwesna, Menoufia governorate, the governor decided on April 22 to lock down the factory 48 hours for sterilization and give 101 workers who were interacting with these cases fourteen days-off.  The factory had previously denied in a statement dated 8 April 2020 the contamination of the deceased worker Mohamed Mahmoud El Kalawi, confirming that these were mere impartial false rumors and refuting the posts published by some workers in the social media; later on, when the news of the decease were released, a state of denial and panicking prevailed among workers who confirmed that the dead man was in direct contact with many others; however, the comments posted in the social media were rapidly erased by fear of retaliation from the administration. 

Actually, since the beginning of the crisis decisions and statements of the Company's administration were contradictory and unstable; on March 28, a decree was issued to operate through a single shift from 8 am until 5:30 pm and reduce the number of workers in the shift at the rate of three full time working days weekly for each worker; in addition, the number of employees in the various department was reduced with full pay secured to everybody.  On April 5, the decision to totally close the factory was adopted; later on, the administration declared through its official webpage that the decision of lockdown was untrue, expressing doubts about the results of Coronavirus tests made to the deceased worker and confirming that he was not infected as the tests of his family members and interacting people were negative, while tens of cases appeared lately between workers from various villages and towns of Menoufia;

  1. The Sugar Factory of Guergua. Suhag governorate stopped work and granted workers one week leave beginning 21 April 2020; this happened after the confirmed contamination of a canteen worker and his absence from work since one week; the directorate of health implemented the measure of home confinement with all the 300 families of other workers;
  2.  Oraglo Factory for ready-made garments closed doors for two months from 23 March until 30 May; the administration announced that half salary would be paid during this period with the deduction of some benefits estimated at nearly one thousand pounds for each worker; this decision provoked rage among the 1600 workers who refused the cut from the side benefits;
  3. The health bureau of Port-Said closed a Factory of electric cables from April 20 until May 4 after proof of a worker's contamination;
  4. In Gharbia governorate, Tanta Factory of Linen granted vacation of fourteen days to worker Ahmed Mohamed Moussa after he had been interacting with cases of deaths by Coronavirus as he was still coming to work until May 3.  According to workers amounting to 400, the factory administration did not follow strictly the preventive measures of distributing masks (distributed one time since the beginning of the crisis), or systematic sterilization of the setting; moreover, the administration insisted to resume work under the system of three shifts and did not exempt workers with chronic diseases in contradiction with the prime minister decision;
  5. Butagazco Factory of Gas Stowage in Akhmim county town, Suhag governorate contented itself with granting fourteen days of leave to a worker with confirmed infection and those close to him upon decision by the governorate vice-minister of health, and sterilizing the location; on the other hand, work was not interrupted in the firm with no vacation to remaining workers or even medical examination;
  6. The health bureau of Mehalla El Kobra, Gharbia governorate issued on 4 May 2020 the decision of closing down El Samouli Factory for weaving and spinning after the proven contamination of eight workers; since the beginning of the crisis, the factory that employs 500 workers followed the system of two shifts lasting twelve hours each; workers explain the high number of damages by the total lack of sterilization means without distribution of masks or disinfection of workers and production tools;
  7. On the 7th of May 2020, a case of infection appeared in High Fashion Factory of ready-made garments located in Port-Said investment zone; with a capacity of 600 workers; the administration granted the contaminated person fourteen days leave and begun to conduct analyses for only ten workers interacting with the case, while work was pursued without any other vacations;
  8. A case of Coronavirus was discovered on May 9 in the laundry department of ready-made garments Turkish Factory; workers in this department account to 400 off the overall number of one thousand.  The administration granted the infected worker fourteen days leave and undertook analyses for workers in the laundry department where they continued to work until end of the analyses and release of their results;
  9. Gharbia governor stopped work in Othman Factory for ready-made garments in Mehalla El Kobra after Coronavirus was confirmed positive for a worker; he also imposed home isolation of fourteen days for workers and medical examination for those in close contact with the infected one;
  10. Two workers in the branch of electric engineering, Berket El Saba' city, Menoufia governorate were found contaminated by COVID-19 and put in home quarantine for fourteen days; however, neither the company or the health bureau that detected the cases decided lockdown; the hall of services was the only place closed while continuing to provide services to the public in the hall allocated for loading electric cards and dealing with clients using prepaid card in consuming electricity; the only measures taken were the distribution of masks and sterilizing the branch daily;
  11. In Mehalla El Kobra Misr Company of weaving and spinning, worker Ayman Ghonem died affected by Coronavirus before the Feast holiday that begun on the 24th of May; the only measure was to grant a week of vacation in order to sterilize the location until general Hussam Talaat, director of administrative security was contaminated in turn and confined to home isolation;
  12. Dr. Wafaa Hamdi, general director of Agami health sector in Alexandria,  announced on May 16 that five cases of Coronavirus were discovered among workers in Shamaadan Company for food industry located in Dekheila; the affected ones were transferred to the quarantine hospitals to receive the necessary medical care; she also declared that the factory shall not be closed according to the Ministry of Health directives, but the company was disinfected; she recommended to reduce the size of labor present together in order to to diminish crowding and implement all the preventive measures to avoid spread of the pandemic;
  13. A resource person in the Egyptian Company of Subway management and operation revealed on May 16 that one of the employees (R.A) selling tickets in Kobri El Kobba station was affected by the virus, adding that the company declared the emergency state and gave directives to strengthen the preventive measures in subway stations for all the three lines;
  14. The same day, Kom Hamada city, Beheira governorate registered a new case of COVID-19 for a cleaning worker in the railways; the woman was transferred to the quarantine hospital;
  15. Despite the measures of sterilization, a case of infection appeared in Colting Company, one of the companies affiliated to Lotus Group for ready-made garments in Port-Said investment zone; around one thousand workers are employed by this company and the factory was closed fourteen days beginning May 3; it is important to mention that Lotus Group disbursed to the 12,000 workers in all its factories only half salaries with the deduction of indemnities for production and regularity;
  16. In Port-Said, the Pharaonic Company of petroleum derivatives was closed fourteen days beginning May 19 after the confirmed infection of one of its workers in their majority sub-employed and not linked to the company with direct contracts;
  17. In Leoni Wiring Systems Factory located in Medinat Nasr, Cairo the director of maintenance workshop, Tareq El Hosseiny, was found Coronavirus positive and isolated since the 20th of May; however, the administration was complying to the preventive measures, distributing masks twice a day, and disinfecting the location daily; it also decided to close the maintenance workshop and grant interacting colleagues fourteen days-off while pursuing work in all other departments;
  18. Alcosteel Company for steel in Port-Said southern district was locked down after confirmed contamination of unknown number of workers; the closure lasted fourteen days in order to disinfect the factory and undertake the preventive measures;
  19. Five workers were diagnosed infected on June 2 in the cutting-out department of Nile Linen Group Factory: Mohamed Gaber, Sabrine Gaber and three others; the administration decided to grant them and twenty other workers in close contact with these fourteen days-off, in addition to sterilizing the factory with operationalization of all the other departments; the factory had previously been closed fourteen days last April after cases of Coronavirus appeared and deducted from workers' balance of due days-off;
  20. The infection of three administrative employees in the Indian Company Felosti Abalraz for ready-made garments was confirmed on 14 June 2020 and the company did not adopt any preventive measures or usual works of sterilization; moreover, colleagues who interacted with the infected were not subject to any kind of medical examination or isolation;
  21. New cases of COVID-19 appeared on June 20 in Enpi Group for ready-made garments in Ismailia investment zone; these included seven Indian directors; the cases were surrounded by the administration silence and the infected ones isolated and cured in their place of residency; however, workers in contact with them were not examined or granted vacation for home isolation;
  22. Three workers in Mondelez Egypt (Cadbury) were infected; the administration isolated them and implemented the preventive measures of sterilizing workshops of the Factory while pursuing work.

 

Status of Egyptian Women Workers under Coronavirus

The status of women is closely linked to the consequences of the pandemic previously mentioned for all workers; however, it is possible to assert that women are the biggest losers from the crisis; when they call for their rights, the usual answer is: "it's never a good time to talk about women's problems when people are experimenting conditions of war or crises; and our priority now is to overcome the present one", while 2020 was expected to celebrate 25 years after Beijing Platform of Action and represent a clear transition in achieving gender equality.  Nevertheless, the crisis pushed important numbers of women to work under severe conditions resulting from the economic stagnation, impacting negatively the income of most families, and creating enlarged size of women-headed households; numerous women were exposed to losing their jobs in the context of the preventive measures adopted to surmount the crisis; actually, with COVID-19 widespread, the few limited progress achieved during previous decades were exposed to backlash as the pandemic unveiled the weakness of socio-economic systems leading to strongest unjust repercussions on women in all fields of life from health to paid/unpaid work outside or inside the house backed by precarious social protection.  This resulted in amplified negative effects as women in majority are employed in unsafe jobs and live in conditions close to poverty; according to official statistics, nearly 55% of women are in the service sector compared to 44% of men; this is one among the most impacted sectors that was directly affected at the economic level from the preventive measures adopted by the government.  In the context of the growing socio-economic pressures linked to the restriction of mobility, imposed measures of self-isolation, new numbers of women were obliged to join the non-organized sector that considerably violates both women and men rights with lack of coverage by social and health protection; however, women are the most affected because these two systems protect only regular workers until the age of retirement, neglecting the protection of informal categories or those who exceeded the age of retirement and women represent actually a large part of the two categories.  The umbrella of social security or health schemes applies only to workers in the formal economic sector, without extending to the informal one or unpaid domestic services provided by women for the household; additionally, most fields occupied by women in the service sector (food, hospitality and tourism) are projected to be severely affected economically by the preventive measures; consequently, women are highly exposed to harmful risks.  Thus, the pandemic created a severe crisis with socio-economic repercussions requesting to be rapidly addressed in accordance to their size and importance; however, such reaction wouldn't be fruitful if it doesn't take into account the important threats especially impacting women workers; The Lancet journal, among the world's oldest and best-known general medical journals, has warned in its edition dated 14 March 2020 that "policies and public health efforts have not addressed the gendered impacts of disease outbreaks.  The response to Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) appears no different"; according to the same source, the journal was "not aware of any gender analysis of the outbreak by global health institutions or governments in affected countries or in preparedness phases", it adds that recognition of the different effects of the outbreaks is a fundamental step to understand the various impact of health emergency on different individuals and communities and consequently adopt effective, equitable policies and interventions.

Several facts confirm that Coronavirus expansion in 175 countries was more severe for women than men; this is particularly evident with women standing in the first lines of confrontation as they represent 70% of health service providers in 104 countries, with a majority in the nursing sector according to WHO data; this refers to a higher risk for nursing staff dealing with Coronavirus cases who are for longer periods in direct contact with infected patients.  We witnessed concretely this situation in Egypt since the beginning of the crisis with contamination of women in health services including physicians, nurses, health technicians and administrative employees; WHO data indicate that women workers in this sector receive salaries lower up to 11% than their counterpart males.  Following is an explanatory graphic about the statistics of women and men percentages in each health field

 

 

 

 

On the other hand, unpaid labor provided by women is not recognized by the society despite its important role; according to UN Women, women assume increased unpaid tasks within the preventive measures as they shoulder globally 75% of domestic work and family care responsibility; ILO figures confirm also the hassle endorsed by women: 76.2% of overall hours devoted to unpaid care are undertaken by females, i.e. around three times more than males allocation to similar works; therefore, the suspension of classes in schools represents a higher multiplied physical and psychological pressure on women as they are primarily responsible of children.  While the reason behind imposing quarantine was to reduce the potential risks of contamination, women do not fully benefit from this measure; actually, social culture considers that it is women's responsibility to undertake shopping for the household; according to a research study conducted in 2019, the percentage of women responsible of this duty reaches 80% in some countries and consequently the possibilities of exposure to risks augment through interaction with contaminated people; however, this reality didn't raise reactions from governments who persist to differentiate between gender and health issues and avoid to mainstream the gender dimension in all fields.  This was confirmed by ILO stating that COVID-19 will represent the highest burden for women who bear the socio-economic consequences doubly than men. 

The Arab Women Organization predicted that the pandemic would increase the number of women-headed households; it would also lead to abolish women's labor in marginal professions, such as those paid on a daily base like domestic workers, women in the agriculture or street vendors although their work is helping to feed entire families.  According to CAPMAS and to the statistics of National Council for Women, the percentages of women workers in Egypt are distributed between 18.1% heads of households, with 40.9% of the overall number of non-agricultural labor force engaged in informal jobs, 33.9% of women's labor refer to low quality of works, 6.7% are in the industrial sector, 36.4% in the agricultural sector, 56.8% in the sector of services, in addition to 42.4% who are medical doctors and 91.9% of nurses affiliated to the Ministry of Health,73.1% of the female nursing staff work in private hospitals and other health facilities.  Coronavirus repercussions are expected to affect all these categories, including the health sector with its hospitals and health facilities in the private sector.  Beside, these women are mothers responsible of providing care to their families and overwhelmed by both domestic and outside work pressures; however, the State policies do not respond adequately to their need for protection, either for the health sector or other sectors, particularly those in the informal sector.  This was illustrated by the Central Bank statement dated 22 March 2020 about the measures to neutralize the expected impact of Coronavirus; the communiqué stipulates that credit interests were spontaneously postponed six months for individuals and companies with the condition of abstaining from imposing any additional dues on these late payments; in addition, the Minister of Trade and Industry declared on 17 March 2020 that the Authority of medium, small and micro enterprises affiliated to his Ministry promises to support small projects to face the expected effects of the pandemic; however, financial firms refused to fund micro projects owned 90% by women or treat them equally with the other enterprises benefitting from the delay.  A report published by El Mal newspaper published textually the oral notice addressed to request micro enterprises owners to pay the installments of monthly loans' interests due to credit companies and associations; some of the contacted owners clarified that financial institutions refuse to implement the Central Bank decision pretending that micro projects were not included; in the context of the current crisis, the State should have given priority to protect the weakest categories, or at least granting them equal treatment by issuing an unequivocal decree postponing dues spontaneously in addition to granting them all the additional benefits granted to other borrowers.  According to the Egyptian government report, the majority of current beneficiaries from funding of micro projects are women who were purposely targeted by the State in the context of the national strategy to empower women; actually women-headed households amount alone to 3.3 million, indicating that these women and their families should be prioritized in the State policies aiming at protecting Egyptians from Coronavirus with specific focus on the poorest; this also raises the problem related to domestic workers and similar categories of workers; we noticed here that many families have fired them as a precautionary measure against the pandemic, exposing these to extremely harsh living conditions.  While we consider that families employing domestic workers should have given them paid leave until the end of the crisis, there is urgency to amend the Labor Law that should include this category under its umbrella; actually, it is possible to exclude the chapter about work place inspection and judiciary arrest in their case to avoid protests about the necessary integrity of households and ensure their other rights such as decent salaries, working hours, days-off and social security protection.

On another level about the impact of COVID-19 and poverty rates, UNCTAD has published a working paper which introduction indicates the necessity of taking in consideration gender gaps when addressing the virus; otherwise, women would bear a heavier price than men.  In the same line, the secretary general of Britain workers' trade unions, declared that women workers were leading the war against Coronavirus; however, hundreds of those are stuck with miserable level of salaries and unsecure jobs.  According to Sam Smithers, executive director of Faucet Philanthropy Association concerned with gender equality in the UK, gender equality at the workplace will witness a backlash for decades as a consequence of the crisis is there were no governmental interventions to avoid this happening.  A research conducted by London University Centers of Financial Studies and Education concluded that mothers are the most likely to lose permanently their jobs at a percentage as high as 47%, or forced to be on leave by 14%; in parallel, the sectors of hospitality and wholesale and retail which employ important numbers of women would be highly affected; along with this, Sarah Rayes, head of research and policies department in the group of women-budgets in the UK, specified that women went through the crisis in a state of economic deprivation which raises concern about the pandemic impact on their incomes and access to job opportunities leading thus to increasing gender-gap, especially in wages.  A recent study published by the United Nations on 4 September 2020 indicated that Coronavirus is likely to push 47 million women into poverty; another study conducted by UN Women and UNDP showed an increase in the rates of poverty among women by 9.1% while before the pandemic, this rate was expected to reach 2.7% between 2019 and 2021.  It is true that the crisis will impact the percentage of poverty worldwide; however, women will be affected unequally, especially women at the reproductive age.  According to the study, there will be 118 women against 100 men in the age bracket 25-34 falling under the line of extreme poverty (1.90 dollars or less daily); it is also projected that in 2030 the gap will raise to 121 women against 100 men; moreover, data shows that the global health crisis will lead 96 million people by 2021 to fall into extreme poverty with 47 million of women and girls among them; she added that the various evidences of gender inequality should encourage now the adoption of rapid policies putting women in the heart of the efforts to recover from the virus.  Therefore, she proposes that each set of measures and budgets allocated to the pandemic should include mechanisms and protective legislations for women, practically meaning the following measures:

  • Mainstreaming women in the heart of measures addressing the pandemic;
  • Transforming unpaid and unjust care services into a comprehensive new care system for all;
  • Developing socio-economic plans with intentional focus on women and girls' life and future;

 

Fourth axis: Analysis of the crisis and its repercussions

This analysis is based on the monitoring conducted among the most affected work sectors and collected available data and information regarding the socio-economic damages resulting from the pandemic; additionally, it relied on measures and decisions adopted by the State and business owners are part of the analysis as well as civil society and personal initiatives' role; actually, all these represent indicators contributing in assessing the present situation and the competence of efforts to alleviate the crisis.  The analysis of all these factors is indeed the starting point for a required scientific approach in this stage helping to understand the negative consequences and weaknesses pertaining to the State policies, health systems, legal and economic institutions. 

In fact, the effects arising in some specific sectors witnessing a drastic diminution of employment and detailed in previous chapters, do not justify the violations and harms of workers' rights in the entire governmental apparatus where monthly salaries were reduced to be limited to the basic wages without any side benefits or incentives; in addition, motherhood and childhood care leaves were temporarily abolished, strongly affecting the strength of women workers. 

On the other hand, the monitoring process revealed that the less harmed categories included high skilled workers in the field of communication and information technology, as well as on-line sales.  Instead of receiving complaints from those, we were informed that the rates of employment and salaries had increased in these fields.  This requires a reflection about the qualifications needed in the future labor market and the changing concepts regarding flexible work that need in turn the adoption of protective legislations regulating long-distance work.

In the same context, indicators show that the most prominent changes produced by the pandemic refer to households' daily income, and the diminution of living levels resulting from companies' owners decisions of collective termination, reduction of salaries or abstention from disbursing wages, added to the lockdown of enterprises; for example, indicators related to the private sector show that over half of workers (55.7%) are working less than usual before the crisis, 22% work intermittently, and 18.1% have become unemployed; moreover, fourth of workers mention a steady salary during the pandemic, on the contrary 73.5% indicate a decrease and only 1% mention an increase.  In parallel, CAPMAS expects that 46.5% of households' incomes will remain steady by 51.1% in urban areas against 43.3% in rural ones; CAPMAS also predicted that incomes will decrease especially in rural areas  by 52.3% against 43.3% for urban areas; projections indicated in addition that half of households borrow from others and around 17% rely on philanthropic donations; in the meantime, nearly 5.3% of households benefitted from the grant for non-organized labor in case insufficiency of income was proved.  According to CAPMAS report 60.3% of the sample explains the regression of incomes by governmental preventive measures, 35.5% by unemployment, and 35.5% justified this by the decreased demand of their productive activity.

As of the health sector for 2018, CAPMAS estimated the number of governmental hospitals at 691 with a capacity of 95,683 beds and 91,316 physicians in the governmental sector; on the other side, private hospitals account to 1175 with a capacity of 35,320 beds and number of physicians amounting to 29,290.  These figures are not solely related to Cairo but to the entire country reflecting incompatibility with the size of Egyptian population exceeding one hundred million, especially in times of the severe current crisis, either in terms of beds' capacity, or overall number of medical doctors for both sectors; moreover, the data related to the health private sector cannot represent a real indicator of the entire health sector size as its contribution during the pandemic was solely addressed to the rich capable of spending 20,000 pounds by day; this also necessitates to be revised for a health system where chances of the poor are to die while rich recover; it is especially imperative in a country with rates of poverty escalating to 32.5% in 2018 before the crisis compared to 27.8% in 2017 and most of them uncovered by social and health security schemes being outside of the formal sector.

International Food Policy Research Institute conducted a measurement of the economic impact of Corona pandemic; their research predicts for Egypt that the gross domestic product will drop between 2.1 and 4.8% during 2020.  According to the rates of poverty in Egypt by using the national lines of poverty (which are defined by each country according to its own characteristics on the base of a set of nutrition products and their price levels), the line of extreme poverty has increased from 16.7% in 1999-2000 to 32.5% in 2017-2018, i.e. almost third of the Egyptian population is falling under the line of extreme poverty and the number of poor increased during the same period from 10.6 million to 31.3 million with 20.7 million additional poor between the two dates. 

 A recent study published by the United Nations indicated that Coronavirus is likely to push 47 million women in poverty; another study conducted by UN Women and UNDP showed an increase in the rates of poverty among women by 9.1% while before the pandemic, this rate was expected to reach 2.7% between 2019 and 2021.  It is true that the crisis will impact the percentage of poverty worldwide; however, women will be affected unequally, especially women in the reproductive age.

By 2021, there will be 118 women against 100 men in the age bracket 25-34 years old living in extreme poverty (less than 1.90 dollars daily) and the gap is expected to become 121 women to 100 men by 2030, in addition to the increase of people living worldwide in extreme poverty to 435 million; this comes in accordance with the economic measures adopted by the State within the program of economic reform that sought to reduce the size of subsidies for goods and services and rationalize governmental expenditures; these policies resulted in unprecedented rates of inflation.  As of the categorization of poor, official data shows that they include 43% of workers in private sector enterprises, and 19% of workers in the governmental/public sector; with 37.6% people under the line of poverty belonging to temporary labor.

Unemployment is considered one of the main channels conducting to poverty; number of unemployed is expected to rise in Egypt either due to the loss of jobs, reduced available opportunities of getting jobs as a consequence of the recession in the economic performance generally, and particularly with the reduction of foreign investments; here we can refer to the two most categories exposed to loss of jobs: first are self-employed workers without relying on others, and the second category includes workers in the informal sector, with great interferences between the two.  According to the labor force census of 2018, self-employed amounted to three million representing nearly 11.5% of overall labor force; there is no available accurate data for those in the informal sector; the economic census of 2017-2018 indicated that workers in the informal private sector outside enterprises reached about four million representing 31% of workers in the private sector while workers in outside enterprises accounted to 11.7 million i.e. 45% of overall workers according to the Ministry of Labor Force declarations; however, ILO estimates that there are 16.5 million of workers in the informal sector representing 63.3% of overall labor force in Egypt; this is a high percentage which might not be quite accurate, especially that it exceeds that of many countries such as China and Brazil.  The indicators of some estimates consider that the present crisis might lead to add between 336,000 to 1.3 million of unemployed compared to the last quarter of 2019 including alone 2.3 million without jobs; these calculations practically mean that the average rate of unemployment could be up to 11.5% in 2020.  The estimates of the Egyptian Ministry of Planning and Economic Development consider that those exposed to lose their jobs by end of 2019-2020 are 824,000 workers in case the crisis was lasting until end of 2020; therefore, the number might amount to 1.2 million persons, in the majority belonging to the sectors of wholesale and retail trade, transports, storage, transformative industries, domestic services, and tourism; in addition, this applies to the labor force returning from abroad especially from Gulf countries specifically those affected by COVID-19 and who will find a market unable to absorb them.

In the same context, CAPMAS indicators for the second quarter of 2020 (April-June 2020) show that the rate of unemployment represented 9.6% of the overall labor force against 7.7% in the first quarter of the year with an increase of 1.9% and of 2.1% compared to the similar quarter of the previous year; this resulted in 2.574 million of unemployed with 1.934 million males and 640 thousand females compared to 2.236 million in the first quarter of the year and an increase of 338 thousand of additional unemployed with augmentation of 480 thousand from same quarter in previous year; the rate of unemployed males accounted to 8.5% of allover men workers while it was of 4.5% in the first quarter of the year and of 4.2% in the similar quarter of the previous year; rate of female unemployment amounted to 16.2% for total women workers while it was of 21.95% in the first quarter of the year and of 22.4% in the similar quarter of the previous year; rate of unemployed in the age bracket 15-29 years old was of 60.4% during the referenced quarter against 68.5% in 2020 first quarter; the rate of unemployment increased in urban areas to reach 12.5% of overall labor force while it was of 11.1% during the precedent quarter and 9.3% in the same quarter of previous year; the same applies to unemployment rates in urban areas with respectively 7.4%, 5.1% and 6.1%. 

On the other side, unemployment decreased for graduates of middle, over middle, university and post university levels to reach 69.2% instead of 85% during first quarter of the year.  CAPMAS data indicates that 61.9% experienced the following changes in their lives:

  • Unemployment rates augmented to 37.5% for those under university graduates against 36.2% in the previous quarter of the year and diminished compared to 42% in similar quarter previous year; as of unemployed university graduates and post graduates, they accounted to 31.7% against 48.8% in previous quarter and 46.9% in similar quarter of previous year;
  • 24,115 million were working while they amounted previously to 26,772 million with a decrease of 9.9% and distributed between 10,229 million in urban areas and 13,776 million in rural areas; this decrease was due to the departure of many workers from the ranks of the labor force as indicated by indicators and statistics of official institutions at the international and national levels.

 

TABLE I: OVERALL MONITORED CASES OF VIOLATIONS INSIDE COMPANIES

 

#

Company

Type of violation

Nbr of workers

Date of violation in 2020

1

Gas for Tourism

Open-ended unpaid vacations

600

March 2020

2

Gouna for touristic development

Termination and unpaid vacations

700

March 2020

3

Grand for Tourism

Open-ended unpaid vacations

No available accurate information

March 2020

4

Sun Rise

Ending contracts and open-ended unpaid vacations

500

March 2020

5

Small companies of transportation and touristic services in Hurgada and Sharm El Sheikh

Termination and open-ended unpaid vacations

Around 2000

March 2020

6

El Mesafer for Touristic Services, Cairo

Termination and unpaid vacations

350

March 2020

7

International Service for Touristic Services, Cairo

Open-ended unpaid vacations

50

April 2020

8

Abu Omar of Sweets Shops, Alexandria

Termination

60

April 2020

9

Small workshops of ready-made garments, Alexandria

Unpaid open-ended vacations

Around 300

April 2020

10

Golden Crescent and Star in 10th of October city

Additional working hours without remuneration

2000

April 2020

11

Eurotex for Clothes, Port-Said

Preventive measures not applied and three shifts merged

1600

April 2020

12

Firestone Appareil,

Termination

200

March 2020

13

Union Air Group

Compulsory vacations deducted from annual days-off

No available accurate information about exact  number

March 2020

14

British International College, New Cairo

Termination

200

March 2020

15

Plaza for Ready-made Garments, Port-Said

Ending contracts and unpaid open-ended vacations

1000

March & April 2020

16

Aswan UNiversity

Termination

1500

March 2020

17

El Nahr El Khaled for ready-made garments, Port-Said

Termination

150

April 2020

18

Small projects (58 factories) Southern Port-Said

Termination

200-3000

April & May 2020

19

Embi for ready-made garments

Termination

550

April 2020

20

Orgello for Clothes, Ismailia

Unpaid vacations

3000

April 2020

21

New Line Back for cartions, Sadat city

Unpaid additional working hours, no preventive measures, and shifts merged

500

May 2020

22

Abu El Nasr for cartons in Menoufia

No preventive measures and unpaid open-ended vacations

300

March 2020

23

Notre Dame School in Aswan

Terminati25on

80

March 2020

24

Eemar for Entrepreneurship

Reduction of salaries and unpaid open-ended vacations

Not identified

April 2020

25

Thulathia Laundry in Qalioub

Unpaid salaries for two consecutive months

Not identified

April

26

Cairo Cotton Center, Qalioub

Termination

350

May

27

Turkish Company for weaving and Spinning, Damietta

Unpaid additional working hours and no preventive measures

Not identified

May

28

Gebril Factory for underwear, El Amiria

Termination

50

May

29

Zamalek Sporting Club

Unpaid salaries in March and Ramadan bonus

Not identified

April

30

Gezira Youth Center

Termination

Not identified

May

31

Metco for ready-made costunes, Port-Said

Reduction of salaries and unpaid open-ended leaves

1000

May

32

Uber Technologies

Termination

3700

May

33

Ghabbour for cars

Termination and reduction of salaries

200

May

34

Agha City Council, Daqahlia

Late disbursement of salaries consecutive months

367

June

35

High Tech for textiles, Alexandria

Salaries reduced by 50%

150

June

36

Regina Bak for cartons, Sadat city

No preventive measures

1000

June

37

Meedo for Paintings, Alexandria

Termination and reduction of salaries

900

June

38

TC for clothes, Obour city

Deduction of Feast holidays and unpaid overtime

4500

August

 

 

 

TABLE II: MONITORED CASES OF PROTEST ACTIONS IN COMPANIES

Name of Company

Reason of protest

Nbr of protesters

Date in 2020

Type of protest

El Nil for Isolation Products

Unpaid dues and delayed incentives

300

June

Strike

Sasco for stationary

Factory closed & workers requested to sign resignation without receiving end of service bonus

65

May

Sit-in

El Watania for iron industries

Unpaid incentives, dues from the complementary fund, and trade union members stopped from work

Exact number couldn't be identified

May

Sit-in

TC for ready-made garments

Deduction of Feast holidays from salaries and increased working hours

4500

August

Strike and assembly

Misr for weaving and spinning, Shebin El Kom

Abolition of Feast bonuses and health benefits

3000

September

Assembly and partial strike

Sitcor for weaving and spinning, Alexandria

Lockdown and liquidation without disbursing workers' financial dues for previous years

300

June

Sit-in

Investment for ready-made garments, Ismailia

Not conforming with prime-minister decision of distancing and reducing number of workers present together

4500

March

Strike

Nasr and Fath Garages of the Authority of General Transport

Reducing bonuses on revenues by 25%

1000

March

Strike

Cement National Company

Undisbursed dues of workers for liquidation

900

August

Addressing protest memo to prime-minister

Thulathia Laundry

Undisbursement of salaries

Not identified

April

Strike

Giza Four Seasons

Reduction of salaries

Not identified

May

Sit-in

Workers in Hurgada touristic enterprises

Exemption of benefitting from the emergency fund

800

May

Sending memo for aid to the President of the Republic

Marina Beach Hotel, Hurgada

Workers compelled to resign

Not identified May

Complaint to Red Sea governor

 

 

 

Note: The two previous tables include only the companies we were able to ensure the veracity of their information provided through direct contact with workers.

TABLE 3: NUMBER OF INJURED WORKERS BY CORONAVIRUS IN COMPANIES

 

#

Place of injury

Type of injury

By month in 2020

Number of

Injuries

Measures observed

1

Ready-made garments Factory, Kafr El Dawar

Infections

April

2

Lockdown and 14 days of home isolation

2

Enbi Petroleum, Cairo

Infections

March

1

Leave to the infected worker

3

Nestle, Cairo

Decease from infection

April

1

Lockdown of dry food factory for sterilization and tests for colleagues in close contact

4

Lecico Misr in Borg El Arab, Alexandria

Infections

April

2

Lockdown and 14 days of leave for workers

5

Nile Linen Group, Alexandria

Infections

April

2

Closure of a department 14 days; company was totally locked down four days previously with the 1st case of contamination

6

Belle Egypte La Vache qui Rit, 10th of Ramadan

Infections

April

12

Lockdown and isolation leave and referral of injured to quarantine hospitals

7

Ceramic Omega, 10th of Ramadan

Infections

April

More than one worker

14 days of leave for all workers

8

Othman for underwear, Mehalla El Kobra

Infections

April

1

Lockdown fourteen days

9

Carrefour, Dandy Mall

Infections

April

1

Worker granted vacation, work pursued

10

Egypt Foods, Menoufia

Decease from infection

March

1

Closure of the factory three days for sterilization and people in contact granted 14 days-off

11

Girga for sugar, Suhag

Infections

April

1

Workers granted seven days leave

12

Electric wires, Port-Said

Infections

April

1

Closure fourteen days

13

Butagazco, Suhag

Infections

May

1

Only persons in contact given 14 days-off

14

El Samouli, Mehalla El Kobra

Infections

May

8

Lockdown fourteen days by health office decision

15

High Fashion for ready-made clothes, Port-Said

Infections

May

1

Infected worker granted 14 days-off and tests for interacting colleagues

16

Turkish for ready-made clothes, Port-Said

Infections

May

1

Infected worker granted 14 days-off and tests for interacting colleagues

17

Ready-made clothes, Mehalla El Kobra

Infections

May

1

Closure fourteen days by governor's decree

18

Electric Engineering, Berket El Sabaa, Menoufia

Infections

May

2

Contaminated workers given 14 days-off and closure of the publice services hall

19

Misr for weaving and spinning, Mehalla El Kobra

Deceased from contamination

May

1

Administration contented itself with the Feast holidays that was simultaneous with the case of death

20

Misr for weaving and spinning, Mehalla El Kobra

Infections

May

1

The director of security was confined at home

21

Shamaadan for Food industries

Infections

May

5

Contaminated transferred to quarantine hospitals, factory occupied only by workers of sterilization and preventive measures reinforced

22

Egyptian for subway operationalization

Infections

May

1

Contaminated worker given fourteen days-off with sterilization of offices and improving preventive measures

23

City council of Kom Hamada, Beheira

Infections

May

1

Woman worker granted fourteen days-off and transferred to quarantine hospital

24

Collting for ready-made garments, Port-Said

Infections

May

1

Lockdown fourteen days and transfer of the contaminated to quarantine hospital

25

Pharaonia for petroleum derivatives

Infections

May

1

Lockdown fourteen days and isolation of the contaminated

26

Leoni Wiring Systems, Cairo

Infections

May

1

Worker and in contact colleagues granted fourteen days of isolation, sterilization of the maintenance workshop

27

Costel, Port-Said

Infections

May

More than one

Closure and fourteen days-off

28

Nile Linen Group, Alexandria

Infections

June

5

Contaminated workers and twenty contact colleagues granted fourteen days for isolation

29

Indian Filosti Abalrez for clothes, Ismailia

Infections

June

4

Fourteen days-off for contaminated workers

30

Empi for ready-made garments, Ismailia

Infections

June

7

Contaminated isolated at home

31

Mondlize Egypt (Cadburry), A;exandria

Infections

3

July

Contaminated isolated and implementation of preventive measures

 

 

Data and figures included in Table I indicate that the types of violations were as follows:

  • Reducing the number of workers either by termination or forcing them to sign resignations;
  • In some companies, reducing salaries by half and abolishing indemnities and other benefits;
  • Deducting from salaries against compulsory leave or from the balance of due annual days-off;
  • Postponed disbursement of salaries and bonuses for consecutive months; this was a repeated violation as shown by the report; moreover, workers were obliged to work additional hours than usual without remuneration; this was especially true in companies that decided to merge shifts in order to go round the limits of mobility imposed by the curfew;
  • Absence of preventive measures, mainly constant sterilization and social distancing which couldn't be implemented with merged shifts.

Table II indicates the following reasons of protest:

  • Abstention from disbursing salaries or retarded share of benefits;
  • Abstention from disbursing dues stipulated by Law in case of liquidation;
  • Reduction of indemnities and deduction of indemnities by 25%;
  • Locking down and liquidating companies without paying end of service dues;
  • Abstention from implementing the prime-minister decision to reduce the number of workers present together in order to limit the damages of Coronavirus;

Table III shows that only in the monitored sample there were over 67 people contaminated inside factories and companies and two cases of death; measures adopted include the closure of fourteen factories and granting fourteen days-off to workers, nine enterprises gave only the infected worker fourteen days-off for isolation, five companies gave fourteen days-off to the contaminated only without closing; thus most companies contented themselves with the fourteen days-off.  Only six companies responded to the need of sterilization in order to pursue production after isolating the infected worker.

All indicators stated above confirm that we are going through a concrete severe crisis directly affecting the socio-economic status of workers; they also explain that the price paid by the most marginalized and poor was the highest and cannot be compared to the status of business owners despite their loss of benefits in some sectors; it is definite that the figures and types of violations monitored here clearly show that important numbers of workers lost basic means of living after being fired.

This in turn confirms the total absence of social responsibility by the private sector, a concept that should have been highly valued during the crisis until the present moment; actually, all published information indicate that violations are still occurring, especially in the sectors suffering from the pandemic damages; consequently, there is need to develop rigorous solutions through a comprehensive plan and a set of new policies to overcome the crisis with minimum losses while avoiding negative practices and decisions that led to workers and their families deteriorated socio-economic conditions.

 

Fifth axis

Findings and recommendations

The previous analysis of the crisis and its socio-economic repercussions indicates that this time things were different from other crises; in 2008, the crisis had a financial nature impacting some economic sectors; but today, we are facing a human and health crisis reflected in the economic sectors.  Despite the commonalities between the two and the huge damages caused in both cases, they hold big differences; accordingly, we considered that the priorities now should be geared towards the elaboration of economic policies together with the reform of the health system to be addressing the protection of all citizens, including the marginalized and the poor.  Focus should also go to legislations regulating work relations.  The present crisis obviously proved the imperative need of cooperation between State institutions and the civil society with all its variations; this is particularly true when we witnessed their social efforts and initiatives representing an important factor in surmounting the crisis and its consequences; therefore, it is necessary to adopt new political methods seeking to prioritize projects ensuring the protection of poor, limiting unemployment, and safeguarding the professional security of workers as well as applying fair work standards to everybody without discrimination.

This is the vision we are attempting to support in order to guarantee stability and security for all social classes; it requires rapid policies and solutions for the benefit of all working sectors.  We separately mention here the public and private sectors of pharmaceutical companies that proved readiness of facing the crisis by easily providing the necessary medicines; accordingly, we confirm the necessity of protecting this sector and developing it in the future.  On the other hand, the weakness of the State institutional apparatus appeared clearly in addition to the weak policies adopted for the benefit of workers at social, economic and health levels; this requires prompt adoption of solutions to be implemented through a future operational plan concerned with present and post-crisis periods, especially that predictions indicate probable occurrence of a new wave for the virus taken into account from now by several governments worldwide.

 

Main recommendations

For the sector of medical professions and the health system

  • Increase financial allocations of the public budget to the health sector that was assigned 2.24% for the present financial year, i.e. less than 2014 Constitution clauses in Article 18 requesting that this allocation wouldn't fall under 3% of the national product to be gradually increased in accordance with the international rates;
  • Elaborate a comprehensive proposal in cooperation with the Syndicate of Medicine to solve the issue of insufficient numbers of physicians;
  • Increase the indemnity granted by decree during the pandemic crisis, and activate the decision which was not implemented until September 15, 2020 for all medical teams in direct contact with infected cases; the incentive for medical teams was an issue constantly raised by physicians and nurses even before the pandemic;
  • Improving governmental hospitals' conditions and providing them with the necessary medical equipment;
  • Exempt persons over fifty years old, people affected by chronic diseases and pregnant women from dealing with the contaminated during epidemic periods;
  • Introduce an amendment to Law 14/2014 about the special incentive of medical professions as medical rescue and ambulance teams were excluded from the Law;
  • In the same context, the Authority of First Aid Rescue and Ambulances had requested to transform all its vehicles under the same protocol of ambulances dealing with Coronavirus, i.e. with similar equipment and medical necessities, as well as abolishing paid services or non-urgent services;
  • Grant workers infected by COVID-19 during work the treatment of professional illness according to the stipulation about professional illnesses in Labor Law 12/2003;
  • Disburse a material compensation to the families of all medical teams who lost a member as a result of dealing with Coronavirus similarly to the measures adopted by the Syndicate of Medicine.

 

Recommendations about labor legislations

The current crisis unveiled the defects in legislations related to working relations and the lack of professional security for workers; therefore, we recommend to:

  • Activate Articles 196 to 199 of Labor Law 12/2003 indicating that employers should apply for the enterprise' closure, or reduction of its staff or size of activities - when this affects the size of labor force - to the commission established by prime-minister decree number 984/2003; the request of liquidation should mention the reasons of liquidation or reduction of staff, number and categories of workers to be terminated; the commission would then examine the validity of economic necessity and the possibilities to overcome the situation.  In the context of the present crisis, it is necessary to revise the chances of continuation even with potential losses, or examine the option of changing the nature of activity for some time; in case the application referred to partial lockdown, transformational training for workers should be foreseen; for bankrupts or liquidation, the Ministry of Labor Force should follow-up attainment by workers of all their dues;
  • The present crisis raises again the problem of domestic workers and those in similar jobs; it was noticed that numerous families got rid of this category as consequence of the pandemic, exposing these workers to extremely difficult living conditions; we consider that it is families' duty to grant their domestic workers paid leave until the end of the crisis as all parties should bear a part of responsibility in this respect; accordingly, we reiterate the demand of amending Labor Law to avoid excluding this category from its umbrella; this is feasible by modifying the chapter about inspection of the work place and judiciary measures, securing the rights of these workers in term of wages, working hours, holidays, and social security coverage;
  • It is equally important to regulate the status of contracting offices of sub-labor employment that became widespread in all public and private sectors' companies during last years, and leading to the loss of workers' rights related to professional safety, salaries and work conditions; the first step to regulate this phenomenon is to mention in the Law the prohibition of exporting labor to companies except for temporary and seasonal jobs for less than 10% of the overall size of regular staff; another addition should include the prohibition of employment offices from obtaining any amounts from workers after being employed by any company;
  • Ensure a fair security system against unemployment with compensation, guidance towards professional rehabilitation on new jobs required by the labor market, and securing efficient training;
  • Activate social security coverage for non-organized workers; this will firstly mean the collection of business owners' share which is currently collected independently from workers' share.  Actually, in order to benefit from social security system, workers have to apply to a specialized fund from which they obtain a certificate specifying their status and competence to be registered at the Ministry of Labor Force together with a certificate about the level of his/her skills determining the amount of due fees; at this point, many branches of the fund fail to properly register workers who – in turn – often have difficulty to identify the security system under which they are registered and most of them ignore their rights and consequently do not apply;
  • Putting the Emergency Fund for workers under the control of the commission established by the prime-minister and stop disbursing stipends to its members; moreover, the size of the Fund should be constantly increased through businessmen and their organizations' contributions, as well as donations from other stakeholders willing to support workers; according to the Fund regulation, the insurance salary is disbursed for six months in case of emergency if the employer (enterprise or company) was temporarily unable to pay workers' dues;
  • Apply the treatment of social security to workers in popular bakeries, private land transport, and entrepreneurship who amount to three million; in accordance with the Egyptian Law of Social Security and ILO Convention 102, the remuneration could be paid from the unemployment allocated wages;
  • Employers seeking to implement collective terminations for economic reasons are requested to provide workers' representatives concerned in good time with relevant information including the reasons for termination, the number and categories of workers likely to be fired, and period during which this measure will take place; this should happen the soonest and in line with national legislations and policies; moreover, workers should be consulted about the measures capable of avoiding or limiting the number of terminations to the minimum besides alleviating the damages encountered by unemployed workers in line with Convention 158;
  • Compelling employers to regularly disburse salaries including in times of crises; at the end of work contract, all dues to workers should be fairly settled within a reasonable period as mentioned in Convention 95/1949 about the Protection of Wages;

 

Recommendations related to the non-organized sector

After the crisis ends, follow-up should be pursued to build on the already acquired benefits:

  • Improve the process of registering non-organized workers with the commitment of employers to keep daily books where workers are registered and provide names of workers under the system of social security as well as a proof of their membership fees' payments;
  • Open the social security offices to receive applications for unemployment indemnity which should be promptly disbursed; these indemnities are due on the 8th day after end of service according to Articles 87, 88, and 89 of Social Security and Pensions Law 148/2019;
  • Conduct a census of workers who became invalid, and develop a system of monthly pensions from the Fund's accumulated resources regardless their previous registration or not;
  • Provide the opportunity of professional promotion and development for non-organized workers;
  • Cover non-organized workers with health and social security systems which are limited to those in the formal industrial sector while the informal sector is excluded from protection against ageing, invalidity, death, illness or work injuries;
  • Imperative development of the Ministry of Labor Force electronic infrastructure to implement and activate decisions and becoming capable of addressing its services to the wide sector of non-organized labor.

 

Recommendations related to State policies

  • Enhance Ministry of Labor Force role in providing training sessions to workers, each in her/his profession, in order to promote their skills; a stimulating incentive should be provided during these sessions to both secure regular attendance and give them the feeling they are going through a qualitative change in their professional life;
  • Facilitate measures related to trade unions' establishment by the Ministry of Labor Force, as these entities represent the guarantee of success for any tripartite negotiation;
  • Imperative need to develop a future vision of dealing with the changes that will occur in the labor market under the new trends of "flexible work" from home; actually, this trend requires legal regulations about number of working hours, work injuries, and definition of professional illness;
  • The experience of flexible work proved success in several sectors, mainly communications, electronic sales and networks; this necessitates the development of these networks' infrastructure;
  • Government should adopt necessary measures to widen the scope of unemployment indemnity by including workers affected by partial unemployment, especially with temporary reduction of working hours, abolishment or diminution of salaries;
  • Companies' owners taking decisions of reducing their staff for economic or structural reasons should be committed to fairly compensate their employees in line with ILO Convention 166/1982:

References

 

  1. CAPMAS data and statistics;
  2. CTUWS follow-up of businessmen declarations, strikes, and sits-in through social media after verification of their sources.
  3. CTUWS monitoring and documenting workers' status through life testimonies between 15 March and 15 September 2020;
  4. Data and statistics from the Ministries of Labor Force, Population and Health and from the National Council of Women;
  5. Egyptian Center for Economic Studies research about the Consequences of Coronavirus on the Egyptian economy and the various economic sectors;
  6. ESCWA report "COVID-19: Economic Cost to the Arab Region";
  7. Financial Newspaper reports monitoring the pandemic crisis since its appearance in Egypt;
  8. ILO document published on 23 March 2020 about ILO International Work Standards for Coronavirus;
  9. ILO International Conventions related to the standards of working relations;
  10. ILO series of reports published since the beginning of the crisis;
  11. IMF declarations on 10 April 2020 and "World's Economic Outlook"
  12. Statements of the Syndicate of Medicine, the general trade union of rescuers and ambulances, and the trade union of health technicians;
  13. UN report about the financial cost of the crisis;
  14. UNCTAD Analytical Research;
  15. UNECA report about the economic impact of COVID-19 on the black continent;
  16. WHO declarations since the pandemic spread worldwide;
  17. World Bank report and president of WB Group declarations;
  18. World Bank report of June 2 2020;

 

 

 

 

 

Annex I: Guidebook for the teams of monitoring and documentation

Teams of monitoring and documentation relied in conducting the present work on a guidebook developed by CTUWS central team that included a set of precise criteria; work was composed of three main levels of activities for data collection, verification and revision:

  • First level: interaction with monitoring and documentation teams who were trained on the guidebook content about the criteria and how to use them;
  • Second level: working teams monitored the various violations inside work places and documented them according to the set criteria;
  • Third level: After documenting violations, they were classified by type, and sector.

Main criteria for the process of monitoring

  • Name of the company, governorate and sector of work;
  • Date and reason of violation;
  • Type of violation against workers;
  • Number of workers harmed by the violations in each company;
  • Verification of information and their source before documentation;
  • Source of data and if not related to field work, responsible of releasing information;
  • Measures and decisions adopted by company owners;
  • Commitment to the secrecy of names for those who provided information about their place of work and required to remain anonymous;
  • Role of trade unions inside companies and the extent of their impact;
  • Role of workers' leaders inside companies and the extent of their impact.

In the context of these criteria, monitoring sub-teams conducted their work that was consecutively sent to CTUWS central team which they scrutinized, raised some clarification questions, or refuted some information failing to meet agreed upon criteria.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Note of the translator: the term "worker/s" refers all over the report to women and men workers except in the sector of Axis III about the specific status of women workers.

[2] Note of the translator: One Egyptian pound is currently equivalent to 0.06 US Dollar.