Following the fall of Mubarak, a huge wave of workers' strikes is sweeping Egypt. The army threatens to ban strikes.
On Sunday 13 February, an Egyptian army representative told the news agency Reuters that the next day the army would decree a ban on all union meetings and strikes.
After taking over from the hated president Mubarak when he resigned on 11 February, the army wanted to stop the social upheaval in Egypt, and restore capitalist calm, in the most abrupt way.
On Monday 14 February the army limited itself to an appeal to strikers to return to work: “Noble Egyptians see that these strikes, at this delicate time, lead to negative results”. It “call[ed] on citizens and professional unions and the labour unions to play their role fully” in restoring normal business.
The army also made Monday a public holiday, in addition to Tuesday 16 February which was a public holiday in Egypt anyway, hoping that strikes would peter out.
According to the Cairo Daily News (15 February): “The statement by the ruling military council [on Monday 14 February, calling for strikers to return to work] appeared to be a final warning to protest organisers in labour and professional unions before the army intervenes and imposes an outright ban on gatherings, strikes and sit-ins”.
The army has pushed the people off Tahrir Square, in the middle of Cairo, where they had been demonstrating 24/7 for weeks.
Strike wave
But Tahrir Square has already sparked a huge wave of strikes in areas as diverse as the stock exchange, textile and steel factories, media organisations, the postal service, railways, the Culture Ministry and the Health Ministry.
On Monday 14 February hundreds of bank workers demonstrated outside a branch of the Bank of Alexandria in central Cairo, urging their bosses to “leave, leave!” (like Mubarak). Other bank workers have struck.
Outside the TV and state radio building in central Cairo, hundreds of public transportation workers demonstrated to demand better pay. Not far away, ambulance drivers demonstrated, also to demand better pay and permanent jobs.
Even police officers have been demonstrating for better pay and saying: “It’s hard for us to go back to work because people hate us”.
As the upsurge for democracy spreads into the workplaces, it inescapably becomes an upsurge for social democracy — not just for formal rights to do with elections and so on, but also for economic improvements, against the stifling bosses’ rule there which has gone together with Mubarak’s stifling rule in politics.
And the workers who forge solidarity and confidence in their workplaces will be, in turn, the strongest and most consistent fighters for political democracy.
Egyptian workers launched a new independent union federation on 30 January. The old government-run fake union body, the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), has demanded that the independent federation be banned. On 14 February, 500 workers demonstrated outside the ETUF offices, demanding that ETUF be dissolved and its assets handed over to the workers.
Not free yet
At the official rally in support of the people of Egypt in London on 12 February, British trade-union leaders said repeatedly from the platform: “Egypt is now free!”, as if the removal of Mubarak guaranteed that.
But the threats to ban strikes and meetings should be no surprise. The army high command are all Mubarak’s cronies. The Egyptian army is as corrupt as the whole state machine. It has a hierarchy dominated by old careerists, and it has its own large business empire.
Military-owned companies are active in the water, olive oil, cement, construction, hotel, and fuel industries. Large amounts of land are owned by the military in the Nile Delta and on the Red Sea coast.
The army could command enough credibility to take control because it is organised. Mubarak’s repression made it difficult for opposition groups to develop beyond small circles. The army appeared as the only fallback force already prepared to take political control.
The army chiefs will know that the social upheaval must have affected their conscript rank-and-file. That (and US pressure) will push them to show some flexibility. But they will be determined to defend the essentials of the old order of crony capitalism.
Workers will challenge the army. To win, Egyptian workers will need to acquire the organisation which the army now semi-monopolises. The workers have started organising. They need our support.
After the Tsar was overthrown in Russia, early in 1917, Lenin wrote: “The basic slogan, the ‘task of the day’ [is]: ‘Workers, you have performed miracles of proletarian heroism... against tsarism. You must perform miracles of organisation, organisation of the proletariat and of the whole people, to prepare the way for your victory in the second stage of the revolution’.” The same message holds for Egypt!
Much will depend on whether, and how much, the Egyptian workers can organise politically as well as on a trade-union level.
Egypt’s revolt has so far been secular. The Iranian regime lyingly hailed it as an “Islamic uprising” — only to find that the people of Iran have been inspired by Egypt to come on the streets themselves, for democratic rights, against Iran’s Islamist regime!
However, the next organised political force in Egypt, after the army, is the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Though illegal for decades, it has been allowed a little space by the regime, so that it has been able to take over professional associations of lawyers, doctors, business people, and the like, run welfare projects, and win seats in Parliament. It is said to have 300,000 members.
The Brotherhood is being studiedly moderate. It does not want to rush into a showdown with secular forces in Egypt, or with the army, or with the USA.
But if the ferment continues, and the old state system crumbles, it can stand out as the main pre-organised opposition force, and become bolder. A Brotherhood takeover would mean confiscating Egypt’s revolution for counter-revolution.
It can be countered only by political organisation. Socialists across the world should do all we can to help Egypt’s workers organise politically. The many on the left who depict the Brotherhood as a benign democratic movement, to be censured only for its caution, act directly against the interests of democracy and workers’ rights in Egypt.
