Textile workers in Egypt take a stand for minimum wage increase

On August 17, 600 workers at the Nahdet Samanoud Textile Factory in the Gharbia governorate of Egypt’s Delta began their strike against the jeans manufacturing company’s refusal to implement a government-mandated minimum wage increase announced earlier this year.

The decree would nearly double the workers' current salaries, averaging around 3,500 EGP ($72) monthly, to 6000 EGP ($123). 

The company responded by enlisting security forces to surround the factory, cutting the electricity and sealing off windows in an attempt to force out the majority middle-aged female workforce in Egypt’s stifling 40-degree Celsius summer heat. Workers also reported frequent intimidation and threats by security forces against speaking to the press.

Eman Ouf, an Egyptian journalist with As-Safir Arabi, went in a convoy to the factory along with other human rights advocates to confront the company director, who refused to meet with the group. She said the fear among workers was palpable, explaining how workers kept their faces covered with a scarf during interviews: “They were clearly terrified,” Ouf told The New Arab. “I used to call them every day, but now they don't want to talk anymore because those who do talk get arrested.” 

In response to company threats to shut down the factory if the strike continued, one worker who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals expressed resignation, telling Ouf, “They want to close it, just close it then, we are starving anyway.”

The factory’s uprising culminated in nearly a year-long string of protests that swept Egypt’s manufacturing heartland following the government’s promise of higher wages amid a crippling economic crisis — once again reinvigorating a previously neglected movement among Egypt’s working class.

Tensions escalated on August 25 when eight striking workers were arrested from their homes in the early morning hours. Ten of the Samanoud factory workers were charged with inciting an “illegal gathering” and for “harming the national economy” among others, indictments lawyer and human rights advocate at the Egyptian Center for Economic Social Rights (ECESR) Malek Adly, calls fabricated.

“It appears there was never any political will from the government to implement its decision to raise the minimum wage,” Adly told The New Arab.

'I prefer getting killed or arrested'

In a statement released by the striking workers coalition on September 20, after 35 days of unrelenting government-backed company pressure they ended their protest and returned to work.

However, what remains is the sombre reminder that for many of Gharbia’s garment factory workers, dissent is more than a struggle for better working conditions and wages — for many, it feels like a matter of life or death.

When Hesham Al-Banna, a long-time union activist and chemical colour technician at the Samanound textile factory, arrived at a September 15 solidarity conference organised by local labour activist coalitions, the room seemed to come alive as the audience strained forward in their seats to ensure a full look.

The 54-year-old had been recently released from a hellish 15-day-long detention at the Mahalla police station where he was packed in a windowless dark room with 26 other people. He went on to give an impassioned speech with the straight-forward levelled demeanour of a lawyer, subtly reminding the crowd that despite his hands being made coarse by over three decades of work in a factory, his first trade was his studies at law school. 

He paused in disbelief as he recalled his shock at finding over ten police officers standing in his living room at 3 am and multiple cop cars lining his street during the August mass arrest. But he also appeared a man deeply wrought by the crippling unchanging conditions of a factory he had dedicated his life to, only to make unlivable wages.

The emotional torment of struggling to afford food, medicine, and school for his two children with a mere monthly salary of 3,800 EGP($78) afflicts him. “I prefer getting killed or arrested instead of being heartbroken in front of my family,” El-Bana told The New Arab.

One female worker at the factory divulged to Eman Ouf that she could only afford to pay for one roast chicken in instalments to feed her family.

“When you talk to them you hear many distressing stories,” Emanouf told The New Arab. Moreover, workers spend half of their monthly salary on transportation costs and meals alone in the factory as they are prohibited from bringing food into the factory.

Salaries at Samanoud equate to poverty wages of a little over $2 a day for seven to eight hours of gruelling work.

This is further exacerbated by a worsening economic crisis in Egypt as inflation rates peaked around 32 percent in April of this year and living costs continue to balloon.

Egypt's draconian amendments have ensured impossible standards

Earlier this year, in the neighbouring district of Mahalla Al-Kubra, 7,000 textile workers at the Ghazl Al-Mahalla factory took to the streets to call for a raise in wages, basic meal allowances, and better working conditions.

Strikers faced similar tactics of brute force and harassment by security forces who arrested 13 of the workers on charges of “joining an illegal group” and “spreading rumours and false news”.

The last large-scale uprising by factory workers in Egypt was in February 2022 when security forces shelled thousands of protesters with tear gas at Universal, a home appliances manufacturer, in Egypt’s Giza governorate.

The suicide of a worker at the factory who was unable to pay off his debts following a three-month-long withholding of employees' salaries by the company sparked an outcry. Asem Affifi’s death was the fourth suicide at the factory since 2019.

Draconian amendments to Egypt’s Labor and Trade Unions Law in 2017 have ensured nearly impossible standards for unionising, emboldening companies to weaponise workers' wages.

As a result of stifling changes, the number of independent trade unions in Egypt has plummeted from 1,500 to 150 in addition to the mass detentions and military trials of dozens of trade unionists.

A report by the Center for Trade Unions and Worker Services (CTUWS), an Egyptian NGO, outlined a total of 6,241 violations against workers in 2023 alone.

According to Khaled Gris, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Arab Trade Union Confederation, the government’s extreme tactics of suppression against striking factory workers are linked to their modern historical role in mobilising dissent across disenfranchised sectors of Egypt’s society.

Born out of the industrial factories were the rallying cries that served as the impetus for the 2011 revolution, pouring out from the rural villages of the Delta to the heart of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

“Of course, the state of social and labour stability in the Delta region is considered a reference for understanding the nature of the situation in Egypt in general and the nature of the relationship between the authority and society,” Gris told The New Arab.

Waiting for the final verdict

In the case of the Nahalet Samanound Textile Company, the board of directors has repeatedly claimed that it is waiting for a verdict on an application for an exception from the National Wages Council for the May government minimum wage increase due to alleged financial losses.

While the company was part of a 2014 wave of privatisation in Egypt — a movement that precipitated the dismissal of nearly 1,200 workers at the factory — a shake-up of the jeans manufacturer’s board at the time led to a majority shareholding ending up in the hands of the governmental National Investment Bank (NIB).

Conspicuously, one of the chairs on the board of directors at NIB, Rania Al-Mashat, also serves as a director of the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development which oversees the National Wages Council. 

“She is a stakeholder and the judge at the same time in this scenario,” Mahienour Al-Massry, one of the lawyers working on the cases of the charged Samanoud workers, told The New Arab when asked about the likelihood of the company’s exemption request being approved.

Samanoud Textile did not respond to inquiries asking for a comment on Al-Mashat’s involvement in the request or the factory’s declared profit losses.

Following a forceful dissolution of the strike on September 20, the company attempted to placate workers with a meagre raise of 200 EGP.

While nine of the indicted workers were allowed to return to work, human rights groups have condemned the continued arbitrary detention of staunch trade union activist Hesham Al-Banna, whose hearing was postponed until October 16.

Between the government's clear unwillingness to enforce a substantive minimum wage increase and bellicose silencing of striking factory workers, what persists is the plight of Egypt’s factory workers back from out behind the shadowy industrial barricades once again.

Kelly Kunzl is an American journalist based in Cairo covering Egypt and Palestine