Focus: Trade unions and democracy in Egypt

Abstract

10 | International Union Rights | 25/2 FOCUS | TRADE UNION RIGHTS IN THE MENA COUNTRIES The Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) was established in 1957. It is the largest trade union centre in the Arab world, and throughout most of its existence the ETUF enjoyed a legally prescribed monopoly single trade union structure, under which all unions were required to belong to it. This was compounded by a deep integration between the ETUF and the ruling party, such that in the early 1980s the Ministry of Manpower was simultaneously the president of the ETUF, and critics complained of a ‘revolving door’ between the union and the Ministry. But the government and the ETUF always defended this arrangement, and argued that the monopoly status the ETUF enjoyed appropriately reflected the historical unity of the Egyptian trade union movement. Of course, suppression of labour organising outside of the ETUF was not merely driven by a desire to deter left and liberal activists from pursuing their programmes, but also by the State’s preoccupation with controlling the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the fear that it would was organise itself within such institutions. However, individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood did manage to win support for election to some local union positions, even within ETUF unions, and to higher-level leadership positions in the professional associations maintained by doctors, lawyers, and journalists. The Egyptian Government was even more closed off than the ETUF. The Presidency was not democratically contested at all from the liberation period of the 1950s until 2005, and only limited participation in parliamentary elections was possible from the 1970s. During this period the National Democratic Party (NDP), with support from the military, ossified into an unchallenged monolithic control network that pervaded every organ of State. Religious-based political parties - in particular - were banned for decades. Despite the ban, members of the Muslim Brotherhood ran for parliament as independent candidates, and unofficially constituted the largest opposition bloc from the 2000s. Created within this context, in which no organised political dissent or choice was possible, the ETUF has never been a particularly democratic organisation. Its critics have long claimed that it controlled the list of those permitted to compete in its electoral processes, excluding true opponents. The ETUF last held elections to its own executive body in 2006, in an election that was declared null and void. The Government subsequently issued ministerial decrees simply extending the term of the executive, a situation that persisted for more than a decade, until May this year, when a new union election process finally got underway. The build up to 2011: In the years leading up to the Arab Spring, the Egyptian NGO sector was ‘flooded’ with foreign donors, touting ‘vast’ sums of funding for ‘democracy assistance’1. This must be understood in the context of the enormous overall spending by the US in particular on Egypt’s military, which are far larger. The sums involved could either be characterised as propping up a dictator, or undermining one, depending on one’s point of view, and which budget lines were examined. Frankly, the US seems to have funded both approaches, perhaps even at the same time. In any case, this period saw an upsurge in the work of campaigners, human rights organisations, and labour rights work. It was also significant that a new form of campaigner was also emerging at this time, who was intrinsically linked to a US-backed ‘democracy’ agenda, and who would become incredibly important in the Egyptian revolution: the ‘Facebook’ campaigner. The same period (the six years or so before the revolution) was also a critical time for the independent labour movement (which barely existed a few years earlier). This was also a time of greatly increased labour militancy. A number of strikes and demonstrations provided the background for some of the most important organising that occurred in the sector, and the Facebook activists promoted and documented these protests. The overlap of grievances and organising power across sectors, with independent labour and the Facebook activists beginning to acquire some of the organisational strength that had previously been held in country only by the State, the army, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Some of...