SAUDI ARABIA: Labor minister teaches a lesson in work ethics

The dude serving hamburgers at a fast-food restaurant in Jeddah recently was neither a Filipino nor a Pakistani but, for once, a Saudi.

And not just any Saudi; It was the labor minister himself. Ghazi Alghosaibi acted as a waiter for three hours at a fast-food restaurant last week to encourage all Saudi young men and women to accept jobs generally regarded by locals as low-level or demeaning, according to the Saudi Gazette.

Saudi Arabia relies heavily on foreign labor in the service sector and for construction work. For the last few years, however, Saudi authorities have adopted a national policy known as Saudization to encourage their nationals to participate more actively in a private sector dominated by guest workers from South and Southeast Asia.

But observers say that the policy has not been very successful.

The minister's symbolic stunt was meant to reach out to Saudi youths. According to Persian Gulf media reports, Alghosaibi drew attention to many successful businessmen and politicians who did small jobs before becoming prominent in their fields:

We should see enjoyment in all types of jobs. Hard work, endurance and enthusiasm are important factors to be developed by young Saudi job-seekers. ... They were simple men who rose to heights of fame and popularity through steady effort and hard work. Some of them worked even in restaurants while studying abroad.

Algosaibi asked for tips jokingly and kissed another waiter on the head in a gesture of appreciation.

-- Raed Rafei in Beirut

Photo: Saudi labor Minister Ghazi Alghosaibi, left, serves fast food at a restaurant in Jeddah. Credit: Saudi Gazette

IRAQ: Burnishing Baghdad

Since the 2003 invasion, piles of rubble and filth have become the new icons of Baghdad.

Broken sidewalks, gaping potholes, hulking neighborhood ramparts, concertina wire and other impediments have made movement through the city, either by car or on foot, slow, hazardous and demoralizing.

At last there are signs of change. This year, the Baghdad Municipality received $1 billion through the national budget for public works. Half of it is going to sidewalk and street repairs.

The city has hired thousands of independent contractors to complete small-scale projects that are beginning to dot the shattered cityscape.

With the level of violence down, pallets of paving stones lined up on some of Baghdad’s major streets have become more a more common sight than burned-out cars.

Monuments are being repaired and landscapers are restoring vegetation to traffic medians.

Much of the work is done by hand.

ABU DHABI: Moving to a better place?

They wear hard hats and rags over their faces; they hammer in the dust and, at night, they are silhouettes in the blowtorch light. They are the migrant workers turning Abu Dhabi and Dubai into metropolises of skyscrapers that uncoil from the desert sands like exotic plants of steel and glass.

These futuristic cities along the Persian Gulf in the United Arab Emirates have been criticized by human rights groups and threatened with labor strikes over the low pay and poor living conditions faced by Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and other workers from across Asia.

Responding to this pressure, the Abu Dhabi government announced this week that dormitories and apartments would be built for as many as 800,000 “limited-income workers,” including laborers, cleaners, technicians and housekeepers. An act of compassion? Partly. But the move is aimed at ensuring that nothing disrupts the frenetic pace of construction or spoils the image of a region that markets itself as a hip crossroads of globalization.

An official spokesman said the new dormitories will become cities unto themselves: “All utilities will be provided, there will be air conditioning and everything needed for decent living conditions will be available.”

Human Rights Watch and other groups have blamed the United Arab Emirates for allowing a system in which migrant workers are paid as little as $175 a month, are forced to pay high fees to recruitment agencies, have their passports confiscated and live in crowded rooms, many of them with no air conditioning, on the outskirts of cities. The sons of rich sheiks driving Bentleys and Mercedeses are as telling here as the faces of migrant workers peering from bus windows on their journeys to their living quarters far from the glamour they are building.

Jeffrey Fleishman in Abu Dhabi

Top: living quarters for Dubai's migrant workers. Credit: marketplace.publicradio.com

Bottom: An architect's sketch for a new high-rise in Abu Dhabi. Credit: bestwaytoinvest.com

EGYPT: Released labor activist vows to pursue the battle

He was grabbing a cup of coffee at the factory cafeteria less than two years ago when he heard the call for a strike. “I wondered then what the term strike meant,” recalls Karim El-Beheiry. On his way out of the factory, he heard a fellow tell the press: “I don’t have enough money to satisfy the needs of my son.”

“I cried when I heard that,” remembers El-Beheiry, “and eventually decided to join the strike.”

The words stuck with El-Beheiry until they turned him from a disengaged lay worker into a prominent blogger and labor activist. But he did not know that his dedication to workers’ rights would cost him more than 50 days of imprisonment and torture for allegedly instigating a riot in April, at Mahalla town, the site of Egypt’s biggest spinning and textile factory and the stronghold of the nation’s labor force.

Upon his release, El-Beheiry affirmed to The Times that his experience behind bars, though painful, made him more determined about his cause. “Jail never changes ideas. Coercion and torture makes the person stronger. I love this country and I refuse to give up my rights,” El-Beheiry told The Times over the phone from Mahalla, about 75 miles north of Cairo.

EGYPT: Chaos rising

The two-day riots this week that rocked the Delta province town of Mahalla, leaving one young man dead and about a hundred injured, exposed the failures of President Hosni Mubarak's regime. The clashes erupted after the police aborted a planned strike by the town's 25,000 textile workers. Police fired tear gas and rioters threw stones and burned schools and shops.

The workers were angry over low wages and triple-digit inflation that have led to increasing unrest in a country where nearly half the population is poor. The Egyptian economy is growing, but the benefits have not trickled to the middle and lower classes, who blame Mubarak for years of neglect.

"The whole world suffers from inflation. Each state deals with the problem according to its capabilities; however, the Egyptian government failed in dealing with the crisis and let it deteriorate," wrote columnist Khairy Ramadan in the independent al-masry al-Youm daily. "Aimless anger and aimless siege will only lead to chaos."

Ibrahim Eissa, editor of al-Dostour newspaper, did not mince his words in putting the blame on the regime. "We have to admit that this regime is the real instigator of chaos in Egypt," wrote Eissa, a staunch critic of Mubarak. "This regime will not change anything willingly and it will keep acting in a tense manner, which will push things toward complete chaos."

To contain the tension in Mahalla, the government announced that it will raise salaries by 10%. But with doctors, railroads workers, college professors and other clamoring for raises, it is unclear how a government in debt can make everyone happy. The regime has cracked down on activists, including bloggers, whom it blames for inciting the masses. One of those arrested was Israa Abdel Fattah, who posted a message calling for a strike on her Facebook page./p>

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

EGYPT: Too poor to strike?

Egyptians might be mad, but they are not ready for revolt.

Riot police and a public skittish about confronting the government of President Hosni Mubarak led to a failed nationwide strike on Sunday. Activists had hoped that an Internet campaign and text messaging would arouse enough passion to get hundreds of thousands of Egyptians into the streets to protest low wages and spiraling inflation.

Instead, they got a whimper. The focal point was to be the big textile plant in the Nile Delta at Mahalla. The plant has come to symbolize labor and public unrest over Mubarak’s policies. But police seized the factory before dawn and prevented thousands of workers from striking. Similar rallies were squelched across the country, including at Tahrir Square in Cairo. About 30 activists were arrested, but the atmosphere was relatively calm.

“People are passive and don’t have the strike culture. They don’t even know how to hold a strike,” said one health ministry employee, who asked not to be named.

There were indications that some workers did stay home from work to protest bread lines and inflation that has doubled and tripled in a country where nearly half the population is poor.

Cairo traffic was thinner than usual, and a few shops said business was down. Shopkeeper Ahmed Mohammed said sales were off by 50%. But others said the strike failed because when you barely make enough to survive, you can’t afford to sacrifice a day’s pay to vent your anger.   

"The strike is a good idea, but it has to be well-implemented, which means we should all go on strike together" said elderly shopkeeper Mohamed Tawfik. “However, the 25-year-old man can not go on strike as it will have cost him 15 Egyptian pounds daily pay.  I would have been directly harmed if I had gone on strike because I would have lost my daily stipend."

UPDATE:  News reports out of Mahalla by early evening said that clashes erupted between textile workers and riot police. Some reports indicated that two people were killed in the violence and as many as 100 were injured. One resident told an Egyptian journalist that a train was set ablaze.

— Jeffrey Fleishman and Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

Photo: Textile workers clash with anti-riot police in the northern Egyptian town of Mahalla, 80 miles north of Cairo. Credit: EPA/STR

EGYPT: A call for a national strike

It’s been the same question murmured throughout Egypt: “Is it true everybody will go on strike on April 6?” Opposition groups have called for a national sit-down on Sunday in a bold protest against President Hosni Mubarak's regime.

"We ask you to heed this call in order to warn the unjust that we cannot bear this humiliation anymore and that we raise the flag of peaceful resistance until we retrieve our legitimate right to have a dignified life and to get a minimum wage or pension that can help us face the monster of inflation," reads one missive circulating through Egyptian cyberspace.

Similar declarations have been carried by opposition newspapers and spread through mobile phone text messaging. Bread lines and growing inflation –- prices have doubled and tripled in recent months -- have dealt a deep blow to Mubarak's government. The generally passive Egyptian population, which is accustomed to economic hardship and suppression of opposition voices, is growing more vocal.   

"Nothing will change in this country if we keep playing the role of onlookers. Nothing will change if only one, 10, a thousand or even a million people protest and say no to injustice. Nothing will change unless the 70 million Egyptians oppose the corrupt and unjust government," reads an Internet message sent by opposition groups.

The planned strike of professionals, laborers and students comes two days ahead of the local elections on April 8, which are expected to be easily won by Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party. The regime prevented hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the nation’s largest and strongest opposition group, from fielding candidates.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

Photo: Egyptian laborers walk toward a waiting truck, unseen, on their way out of the Amal Misr Brick Factory's facility at the end of their working week in a Cairo suburb. Credit: Jason Larkin / Associated Press

EGYPT: No strike

After weeks of protest, the Egyptian Doctors’ Union decided earlier this week to call off a strike over higher wages. The decision followed a veiled threat by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif who told the doctors:  “Many people are perhaps unaware of the fact that public sector employees — in particular doctors — are prohibited from striking. Those who wish to express themselves have many alternative methods to stopping work.”

EGYPT: A tense spring heating up

Egypt is bracing for a hot and noisy spring of labor unrest. Strikes are expected from factory workers, doctors and university professors, all of whom are demanding that minimum wages be raised to cope with inflation. Doctors are planning a strike on March 15 to be followed by university professors on March 23 and by textile workers on April 6. 

The cross-class disenchantment comes as a reaction to persistent inflation in a country where half the population lives in poverty. According to press reports, prices of some food products have recently jumped by 122%. Last month, thousands of textile workers protested price hikes on loaves of bread in a Delta province. Egypt may witness bread riots similar to the ones that erupted in 1977. Public outrage over tough living conditions poses the most imminent threat to President Hosni Mubarak’s 26-year-old regime.

“It has come to the point where the government is clashing with doctors and university professors — this regime no longer has any legitimacy,” a leftist political activist was quoted in the press last week.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

EGYPT: Dissatisfied doctors break their silence

Thousands of doctors have voted to strike in an effort to force the government to raise their pay. Surrounded by riot police, the doctors met in the headquarters of their syndicate in downtown Cairo to protest deteriorating economic conditions.

"Strikes are our weapon against a government that ignores us," shouted protesters. Banners said: "Where are the rights of doctors? We are asking for improvement in doctors' conditions."

However, the doctors did not say when they would walk out. "There is no question that we face serious injustice," local media quoted Hamdi Sayed, the head of the doctors' syndicate, as saying. "We can't live a dignified life unless we get decent salaries."

The doctors' protest is another sign of public anger over economic problems. For more than a year, President Hosni Mubarak's government has been challenged by a series of strikes protesting inflation.

In December, real estate tax collectors slept on the road in front of the prime minister's office until the government met their demands.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo.

MIDDLE EAST: No domestic bliss

Human rights advocates have shined a spotlight on the plight of maids from South Asia imported to the Middle East. The nonprofit group Human Rights Watch has accused the Lebanese and other governments in the Middle East of failing to curb serious abuses against Sri Lankan domestic workers.

New-York-based HRW estimates 600,000 Sri Lankan women work in the Arab world, many without basic legal protections. Its 130-page report, released today, focuses on violence against Sri Lankans in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.

EGYPT: Want ads

Egypt is many things, but a pyramid of political correctness it is not. Consider the want ads. In the U.S., companies fine tune job posting prose to create an obtuse language with a style all its own. They "lawyer-ize" it, run it past the human relations department and, generally, make sure it does not offend, outrage or otherwise bruise the feelings of any person or group prone to outrage and bruised feelings.

Flick to the Egyptian classifieds and — depending upon your political correctness index — you'll either be reviled or refreshed. A recent ad for a receptionist in a telemarketing firm left no doubt about the kind of candidate the bosses had in mind: "age 22 to 30 — good looking." It came with a bonus.

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo