Worker struggle points up Egypt's problems
Labor groups have found support among Egyptians angry over rising food prices, low salaries, political repression and a government that often appears detached from its people.
HELWAN, EGYPT — Kamal Abbas is a compact man with a wry smile who has become a major annoyance to the troubled regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
From an office near the steel mill where he led his first uprising years ago amid the sting of rubber bullets, Abbas has helped organize nationwide strikes that have exposed a widening anger over rising food prices, low salaries, political repression and a government that often appears detached from the concerns of its people.
Abbas is passionate, methodical and accustomed to police surveillance. The state has accused him of working with "external forces" to disrupt the country's economy; he faces the prospect of a year in prison. The 50-year-old former millworker, whose hands are thick but no longer calloused from joining hot steel, said the government "feels the cloud of labor's appeal" and fears a wave of unrest.
"The regime is dead. It has no legitimacy," he said. "But the problem is that no alternative force is willing to come forward to bring about change. It's a fear of the state, but not only that. The state has neutralized some opposition voices and simply gotten rid of others. We have become a suffering society with no way to express itself."
Abbas' Center for Trade Union and Workers Services is part of a labor vanguard seeking to undermine state-controlled unions, which many workers regard as corrupt and indifferent to their demands. The organization has also chosen not to openly align itself with a disparate political opposition that includes secularists and leftists in the Kefaya party and Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood.
The allure of the labor movement, which is strongest among the 27,000 textile workers in the town of El Mahalla el Kubra, comes from a bond with struggling Egyptians, about 45% of whom earn $2 or less a day and can no longer afford inflation that has more than doubled the price of many commodities, such as peppers, cooking oil and onions.
The prospect of strikes flaring across the country has prompted Mubarak to raise the basic salaries of about 6 million public workers by 30% and set off a wave of police crackdowns. The authorities shut down the union's four national offices, but a court recently decided that they were free to operate. There's a catch that speaks to a curious legal system that quiets dissident voices: It's up to police discretion to "implement" the court's verdict.
