The government’s reaction vis-à-vis the labor and factional protests and strikes confirm two issues: the government’s inability to deal with the protests, starting with that of the transport workers to the latest protest of metro workers, all the way through to minibus drivers, and ending with the other small protests in the capital and the governorates; the government’s failure to tackle social issues. The government has so far not achieved consensus among the different public groups due to its failure to deal with any real problem.
The government’s reaction vis-à-vis the labor and factional protests and strikes confirm two issues: the government’s inability to deal with the protests, starting with that of the transport workers to the latest protest of metro workers, all the way through to minibus drivers, and ending with the other small protests in the capital and the governorates; the government’s failure to tackle social issues. The government has so far not achieved consensus among the different public groups due to its failure to deal with any real problem.
These strikes came in the wake of the government’s failure to negotiate with the workers, and ended when it finally succumbed to their demands, which means the government has neither good negotiators nor alternatives to face these strikes.
The government knew that negotiation had failed and that strikes would begin at a certain point. Therefore, it had to comply with the strikers’ demands and save its face, especially since some of those strikes affected vital sectors, such as transport, the subway lines and minibus transport service.
If it opted not to meet strikers’ demands, why didn’t it provide alternatives to citizens to thwart the strikes, with reservations, of course, about this option. This confusion and failure shows that the government is incapable of dealing with exceptional circumstances. The government says it has special negotiators, but we do not know what qualifications they have, and we have never heard before about any successes they achieved with regard to ending any protests, not to mention their apparent inadequacy in dealing with the same strike after its inception.
Incompetent and uninterested staff
These successive labor protests, which covered many public and private institutions, clearly suggest a failure to deal with social issues by the present regime. If we look at the government’s configuration itself, we will realize that the assistants and advisory staff appointed by President Mohamed Morsi do not comprise labor or social issue specialists and have no previous experience with the grassroots, the poor, and marginalized groups. This means that the social issue is not among the interests of the president and his senior staff.
Certainly, the government’s or the president’s failure to take any action or decisions on social issues— such as minimum and maximum wages— confirms that their economic and social policies are not different from those the Egyptians revolted against on January 25, 2011, and reflect the present regime’s bias to the upper classes and other social parasites.
There are other worrying indicators with regard to dealing with the working class, which are related not only to the government’s announcement of its intention to promulgate legislations aimed to restrict popular strikes and other forms of social protest, but also to the appointment of a Muslim Brotherhood Manpower Minster, which means that the new regime has plans to nationalize the labor movement.
Other leaks speak about appointing Muslim Brotherhood labor leaderships within the labor unions to replace those whose terms have ended, and about special laws being enacted for this purpose. There are also talks about imposing restrictions on independent trade unions and rescinding planned laws on unions’ freedoms, previously drafted by former Manpower Minister, Ahmed El-Borai, who also held relevant social dialogues with different manpower unions. These policies have adopted the same mechanisms used by the defunct regime regarding trade union movement’s nationalization.
Taking this trend into account, and given the changes that have occurred in the labor movement since the inception of independent trade unions before the fall of Hosni Mubarak, and the role played by these unions in paving the ground for that fall, it is evident that the relationship between the government and the working class is expected to worsen in the future due to the regimes’ inability to meet social demands and handle the different types of social protests, reflecting the magnitude of Egypt’s future crises.
