Court fines Al-Bawaba News owner over LE3 mn for underpaying journalists

Abdel Rahim Ali, the owner of Al-Bawaba News, was found guilty of failing to meet the minimum wage threshold for journalists at his newspaper by a Giza court on Monday. 

The court also ordered that the media magnate and former member of Parliament pay over LE3 million in dues to the journalists, according to lawyer Sameh Samir, who represented a group of the journalists.

Al-Bawaba News journalists held an extended strike at the newspaper’s Giza headquarters last year to protest the organization’s failure to compensate them in line with the minimum legal threshold. 

The case was referred in November to the North Giza Labor Misdemeanor Court which issued Monday’s ruling against Ali. 

The Labor Ministry, which had delegated a representative to seek a resolution between the journalists on strike and Ali, took legal action after the negotiations met a dead end, gathering and presenting all reported wage infractions to the court, a ministry source told Mada Masr earlier this year. 

The striking journalists said at the time that Labor Ministry reports documented “serious violations and clear breaches of the labor law, including the suspension of wages, reprisals against workers and the denial of their most basic legal and human rights.” 

Al-Bawaba News journalists began a strike at the establishment’s headquarters in November last year after they were unable to reach an agreement with the organization’s management over their wages, which stood at no more than LE1,000 per month at the time. 

Guards at the company, who journalists said were employed by Al-Bawaba News’s administration, forcibly broke up the sit-in at the headquarters. 

The administration subsequently pleaded financial difficulties prevented it from paying workers their dues and announced their intention to seek liquidation instead.

Al-Bawaba News journalists continued their sit-in at the Journalists Syndicate. 

The newspaper’s editor-in-chief and owner also attempted to sue several syndicate members for slander after the syndicate hosted a solidarity event in support of the Al-Bawaba News journalists. A Cairo court struck down the case on Sunday.