Ismailiyya Canal Workers Demand Better Pay, Better Conditions, and a Redistribution of the Nation’s Wealth
I visited yesterday striking workers from the Timsaah Canal Company in Ismailiyya. The trip was part of a reporting project on the Egyptian working class that I’ve been doing since arriving two weeks ago.
By the time I arrived in the late morning, a hundred picketers had already been out in the streets since six a.m., occupying a traffic circle just outside of the city center. Charred logs sat by the side of road — evidence of an earlier blockade of the street.
About four-dozen soldiers and police kept watch and directed traffic. Six workers were forced to appear later in the day before military prosecutors. Workers I spoke with said that such intimidation and repression was common but that lawyers from legal aid were providing representation.
Workers at Timsaah are demanding an increase in base pay as well as wage and benefit parity with employees of the Suez Canal Authority. Workers at Timsaah earn less than $100 a month. The company is a government-owned subsidiary of the Suez Canal Authority. Workers directly employed by the Authority make three times that collected by Timsaah workers and are the recipients of generous housing and health care subsidies.
The Timsaah Company headquarters are a short walk from the protest. A striking worker named Mohamed, decked out in his blue company overalls, discussed the workers demands and said that since the January uprising “nothing had changed for the workers … and [the push back from the company and the failure of government to intervene] is almost like a counter-revolution.”
Mohamed stood before a heavy steel gate that partially obscured the yard, where workers construct tugboats, oilrigs, and boueys. Two dozen picketers mingled just behind the gate under two large rectangles of fabric that protected them from the burning noon-time sun.
Mohamed Hamzawy is one of the strike leaders. He, too, is sporting his work overalls and argues that the workers’ demands are reasonable and driven by a love of their nation. The workers, he offered, have great pride in their labor; they love their company. They are highly-skilled laborers who deserve to be paid better. The Suez Canal is a source of great national wealth, he continues. They should be recipients of that wealth, not just the politicians on high and well-placed employees of the Authority. They love Egypt and view the Suez as not only a source for great prosperity in Ismailiyya but also a symbol of Egypt’s significance, globally.
Reasonable demands and national interests aside, these workers are also fiercely militant. Residents here were the first in the country to torch government buildings on the 28th of January. And, when the canal workers struck a week later, the Tahrir Square uprising was elevated to a revolt of national proportion and imbued with an economic critique of the regime that went far beyond demands for representational democracy or free speach.
For well over a decade, workers have been calling for a roll back of the IMF and World Bank-backed economic liberalization schemes of Anwar Sadat and Husni Mubarak and practicing — not simply theorizing — workplace democracy and militant protest tactics. Canal workers in Ismailiyya, Suez, and Port Said were the veterans of the Egyptian uprising. Their organizing experience, political consciousness, and the strategic importance of their labor sector may have been what ultimately broke the regime.
A kilometer down the road from the site of the morning protest stands the Canal Authority headquarters. Its a tall white building, surrounded by lush green lawns. A cool breeze rushes off a nearby lake. Its entrance is blocked by coils of barbed wire, a squad of soldiers, and an armored vehicle. So, too, are several streets downtown.
A government minister is set to meet with the head of Canal Authority tomorrow to discuss the strike. The workers are optimistic that their demands will be meet — they’re reasonable after all.
The strikers might just get their wage and benefit improvements. But their critique of the Egyptian economy, the government, and military runs far deeper than conditions inside their workplace. They readily discuss their intention to build a new economically-just nation, to claim a greater share of the national treasures, diminish the power of their bosses, and eradicate the country of remnants from the Mubarak regime. The bosses and regime remnants are proving difficult to dislodge.
Its a dispute that is becoming more and more acute. As this struggle for the future of Egypt intensifies, the canal workers’ meddle will be tested as will the strength of Egypt’s emerging independent, trade-union movement.
[Update: On Monday morning, workers clashed with about 2000 soldiers, according to Hamzawy. Injuries occurred on both sides with police using batons. Four of the workers called before the military prosecutor yesterday remain in custody.]
