Workers strike over unpaid bonuses at Egypt’s largest textile company

Several thousand workers at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra commenced a partial strike on Wednesday over unpaid bonuses promised by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Workers at the state-owned company are warning they will escalate to a full strike in the next few days if their demands are not met.

With some 20,000 workers, Misr Spinning and Weaving is Egypt's largest textile factory, and one of the largest in the Middle East.

Work stalled on Wednesday after a breakdown in negotiations between company administrators and worker delegations.

According to a presidential decree issued in September, all employees in the public sector should be paid a monthly 10 percent bonus retroactively from July. A majority of the workers reportedly refused to collect their paychecks in the last three days because they didn’t include the promised bonus, Tamer Fayez, a worker at the company, told Mada Masr.

Fayez explained that workers at the company had issued administrators a 48-hour ultimatum to pay the overdue bonuses, threatening a company-wide work stoppage.

Administrators informed worker delegates that the company didn’t have the money, as they had not received the additional bonus payments from the Holding Company for Textile Industries (which oversees the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company, along with 31 other state-owned textile mills), according to Fayez.

Company board members couldn’t be reached for questions regarding the non-payments.

Fayez added that workers also hadn't received their additional LE90 a month in food allowances, which were promised by administrators in May.

"Other than the unpaid 10 percent bonuses, workers are calling for the operation of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in its full capacity, the reoperation of stalled production lines, the accountability of administrators for incurring losses, the reinstatement of punitively sacked workers and other demands," added Kamal al-Fayoumy, a worker leader and independent union organizer who was punitively sacked almost a year ago for leading strikes at the company.

However, company administrators blame the recurring labor strikes themselves, which began in December 2006, for negatively affecting production levels and thus causing revenue losses of several million pounds.

In an interview with the privately owned Youm7 news portal, senior manager Ibrahim Bedeir said the company has plans to shrink its losses by LE200 million per year, adding that losses in 2014 amounted to LE640 million.

Fayoumy is doubtful. “The company will continue to be mismanaged and will continue to hemorrhage hundreds of millions of pounds annually," he argued, "unless administrators are genuinely held accountable for such losses.”

The company’s labor union — which has been serving as a care-taker union since 2007 — “remains silent and is not taking any concrete action to resolve our grievances or to realize our rights,” Fayoumy added.

According to Fayez, the local union committee has “only taken token measures with regard to the violations of our rights and the non-payment of our bonuses," such as posting copies of the strikers' statement — which they had sent to the Ministry of Investment and to the Holding Company for Textile Industries — in the factories.

Fayez said this written appeal is the only action the union has endorsed.