EGYPT: New wave of labor strikes

This time it is not textile workers but tax clerks. Thousands of real-estate tax collectors have been on strike for 10 days to pressure the government to re-adjust their salaries, which they contend don’t cover their basic needs anymore. The protestors are asking to be paid a proper share of the annual tax revenues they collect.

“We won't surrender, we won't give our children’s rights up!” shouted the workers.

However, those slogans fell short of persuading the government to address the workers’ demands immediately. The government insists that a new tax law needs to be passed first before any demands can be met. Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali was quoted this week as saying “Nobody twists the arm of the government. Let them sleep in the streets if they want to.”

The minister contends that the total revenues collected by the real estate tax authority are LE 450 million, which are mostly used to cover collectors’ salaries, which he estimates at LE 437. However, the protestors challenged the minister’s claim, asserting that that they collect more than LE 3 billion a year.

The tax collectors’ protest comes amid a series of labor strikes that have rocked Egypt for a year. However, it seems that the disenchantment is not only restricted to the working class. The middle class has recently decided to follow suit. University professors have become vocal in their demands to have their working and economic conditions improved. Also, doctors threatened to embark on a series of protests if the government did not heed their demands.

“Things have come to a head; we can’t take our poor working conditions anymore, or our wages that make us more of slave laborers, or the indifference of [state] officials towards our suffering,” said a statement published by a group of doctors this week.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo