http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/06/13/153166.html
It is not without reason that Karl Marx equated workers’ rights with social justice. They say you can measure how civilized a country is by the way it treats echelons of society generally considered weaker, more vulnerable, and more dependent than the rest of the population, and they cite children and the elderly as the most typical. I would add workers. It is not that any of the previously-mentioned attributes apply to them, but they belong to another category whose members have for years been subjected to various forms of oppression, lack of appreciation, and even humiliation—the marginalized, the downtrodden… you name it!
When African-American poet Langston Hughes wrote his radical poem “Good Morning, Revolution,” he did not tackle racial discrimination as he had always done. Instead, he created of workers the main stimulant for any revolution and the most crucial tool for arriving at a formula that grants the prevalence of equality in any given country. Hughes makes the oppression of workers similar to slavery in a clear reference to “wage labor,” the system that renders workers enslaved by their employers through a meager amount of money paid not for the final commodity they produce, but for the time they spend in manufacturing this commodity. A huge discrepancy is, therefore, created between the money the workers get and the profit the business owner makes. By not sharing in the fruit of their toil, workers no longer become active participants in the production process, but rather become similar to factory machines which get no more than the lubrication that gets them going.
December 2006 witnessed the first spark that ignited the long-dormant volcano. Not only did this strike, started by all 27,000 workers at a state-owned spinning and weaving facility north of Cairo, set the stage for an unprecedented wave of labor protests over the following four years, but it also alerted all Egyptians to the power with which people become endowed once they share a common cause.
When the first strike was staged and when more later picked up at an astounding speed across Egypt, it was still hard to discern that a nation-wide revolution was in the making and that what seemed to be sporadic uprisings pertaining to specific demands by one category of the Egyptian society was in fact a rehearsal for the much bigger scale event that was bound to change the course of history in the country. Tracing the development through which these strikes underwent is very helpful in this sense as it underscores the way a few thousands of workers managed to become the spokespeople of the millions who later realized that their own voice was also coming out in the disgruntled chants of those laborers who decided enough is more than enough.
While the close association between this relatively limited labor movement and the sweeping revolution that took place four years after the first strike wave kicked off might not have been perceived before January 25, not making the connection now translates into inflicting the most flagrant injustice on and making even more invisible the warriors who changed history and never asked to take credit for doing so. Issuing a law that bans the only channel they have to voice their grievances is an unforgivable crime not only against them but against the revolution they started and the country they saved.
According to law number 34 for the year 2011—passed on March 24 and forcefully put into action now—anyone who takes part in or calls for a strike will be put to jail for up to one year and fined a maximum of 500,000 Egyptian Pounds. To make sure freedom of expression is by no means curbed, the law specified that not all strikes are banned… only those that involve stoppage of work and obstruction of productivity. I wonder if whoever drafted the law or approved it took a couple of minutes to look up the definition of “strike.” Strikes are meant to stop work and the effects of that on productivity is, in fact, what a strike aims to achieve in order to put pressure on the party that possesses the authority to ameliorate the conditions of indignant workers. As far as I know, workers do not strike out of spite and they should not be treated as destructive forces that aim at destroying the economy simply because they are the economy and that is exactly why they should be respected, appreciated, and granted their full rights. Workers are not politicians with connections nor are they businessmen with money and therefore have no other means of lobbying. Speaking of money, how is a worker supposed to pay half a million pounds in fine when it is his inability to feed himself and his family that drove him to stay for months on end in a sit-in that braves the cold and cares not for the sizzling heat? Maybe that’s another question those who drafted the law might have given another extra minute—to add to the time consumed in looking up the definition—to provide an answer for. Another question since we’re at it: Will “productivity” resume when workers are arrested like they have recently been in different parts of the country?
I hope my bias toward workers does not blind me to the fact that the country is indeed going through a tough time and that a couple more workflow hurdles are bound to send the economy staggering and another couple might deal the already deteriorating financial situation the final and fatal blow and that when this happens neither the workers nor any of us will find the subsidized loaf of bread we used to label “not fit for human consumption” nor shall we have the breath to shout in protest. Will banning strikes put an end to this problem? I believe not. In fact, I believe the exact opposite will happen. While they knew that the injustices to which they have been subjected in the past were part of a whole regime that practically sidelined everyone who did not toe the line, they must be extremely baffled now as they are treated in the same manner after a revolution which they actually initiated and whose main aim was social justice toppled this very regime. In fact, reaction to strikes now is seen as much fiercer than before for while Mubarak’s regime followed the “leave them until they get bored and go home” policy, the Higher Council of the Armed Forces obviously prefers “beat them, jail them, and they will never do this again.”
This is not a battlefield, the army needs to realize, and while they check the definition of “strike,” they can also look into the history of Egypt within the past 30 years and try to deduce that violence brings hatred and almost never achieves the desired degree of deterrence. Workers, like all other Egyptians, saw in the revolution an end to their suffering and only when they are reassured of that will they agree to reach a compromise that neither jeopardizes their rights nor undermines national interests. Nothing could be more detrimental to the revolution and its objectives than treating workers as a disruptive force to a country in which they are the ones who introduced the culture of protests and heralded the end of decades of passivity and political stagnation. The constant reference to workers as a distinct category—always in a negative sense—is equally humiliating for it implies an automatic separation between manual labor and other types of professions that are generally looked upon as more prestigious and of course more regime-friendly by virtue of their better salaries and “higher” social status. Workers are Egyptians who wanted freedom and refused to accept an incomplete form of it. I don’t see how different workers are from political activists who insist on a series of reforms right here and now and refuse any delay in the materialization of the revolution’s goals, only the former go on strikes and interrupt production. Yes, give them other powers in addition to the only one they have and they will use them instead to call for their rights. And remember that it is this very power they used before that is liberating us now.
With every strike, a revolution is struggling to find its way. Suppressing the first aborts the second and drags nations further down into the fathomless pits of tyranny in which they have already been stuck for decades.
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