3 workers at appliance manufacturer arrested as thousands continue strike against delayed wages

At dawn on Tuesday, security forces arrested three workers of Universal for Electrical Appliances from their homes, as the workers' strike over delayed wages continued for the 10th day.

Workers’ wage payments have not been disbursed since July, in the second wage crisis to prompt strikes at the company since 2019. Earlier this month, 2,000 workers began a sit-in at the company's headquarters in the industrial zone in 6th of October City to demand their dues.

Hassan Mabrouk, the company’s general manager, told Mada Masr that the company has been suffering from a major decline in sales since the flotation of the Egyptian currency in 2016 that it has yet to recover from. He said that management had paid the workers their July wages in three payments over the past few days, with August wages due in two payments between a week and 10 days from now, while September wages would be released in two payments from October 5. Mabrouk said that payment would begin to be disbursed as normal after October.

But one worker who spoke to Mada Masr said that on Sunday, management paid out under half of the workers’ dues for July.

While Mabrouk claimed that the wage payment schedule had been agreed upon between Universal’s managers, representatives of the Manpower Ministry and worker representatives, minutes from the meeting at which the schedule was decided, of which Mada Masr obtained a copy, showed that workers were not present.

As workers continued the strike on Tuesday afternoon, security forces surrounded the sit-in, closed the gates, and prevented workers from going out even to buy food, according to the worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hours before the "siege" security sources raided the houses of three workers — Mahmoud Ahmed Haridy, Saeed Abdel Qader, and Said Mohamed Abdel Latif — who had temporarily left the sit-in, the worker said.

Shaima, the daughter of Mahmoud Haridy, told Mada Masr that her father had fallen into a diabetic coma on Sunday and was taken to the hospital where he recovered and was discharged. At 2 am on Tuesday, security forces affiliated with Warraq Police Station arrested her father from his home. The officers refused to allow Haridy to take his necessary medicines, including an aerosol he was prescribed after undergoing a lobectomy, said Shaima, though she added that Haridy’s wife received an anonymous telephone call on Tuesday afternoon requesting that Haridy’s medicines be delivered to the chief of investigations at Warraq Police Station.

Shaima added that she followed her father to the police station after this arrest, and could see the microbus that transported him was there, but could not find her father. Officers who were at her family's house less than an hour earlier denied knowledge of the incident while a non-commissioned officer advised her to go to Imbaba Police Station. There, the chief of investigations told Shaimaa that her father was taken to the headquarters of the National Security Agency in 6th of October City.

Workers at Universal for Electrical Appliances have not been paid for two months. On Tuesday, September 14, one worker doing overtime due to financial pressure died of a heart attack, prompting the workers to announce the strike, one worker told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity at the time.

The workers’ demands include a remedy to the irregularity of their salary payments, reductions to their wages of up to 50 percent, non-payment of monthly incentive bonuses, and a stop to arbitrary administrative decisions.