“I have spent thirty-four years in this profession, and my salary is now no more than EGP 5,700.” Journalist Neama Ezz El-Din began her conversation with Zawia3 with that stark description of pay at Al-Wafd newspaper, before a recent sit-in secured an increase.
Supported by the Journalists Syndicate’s council, journalists at the newspaper protested for several days to demand salaries that reached the EGP 7,000 minimum wage. Their action was not an isolated exception. It exposed a broader crisis across state-owned, party-affiliated and privately owned news organisations, where pay often falls short of basic living costs.
A survey presented at the Sixth General Conference of the Egyptian Press in December 2024 provided evidence of that crisis. It covered 1,568 journalists, including syndicate members and non-members, and examined wages and employment relations.
According to the survey, 51.8% reported an absence of clear wage regulations at their institutions, 50.5% reported that the minimum wage was not applied, and only 27.9% reported full implementation.
Those findings point to a profession in which basic financial protections remain uncertain, even as the cost of living continues to rise.
How much longer can journalists endure?
Ezz El-Din speaks with nostalgia about her early years at Al-Wafd. Pay was reasonable, she recalls, and professional conditions were more stable. She attributes the newspaper’s former financial strength to donations raised by its founder, Fouad Serag El-Din, which, in her account, funded a deposit worth more than EGP 90 million.
That position did not last. Ezz El-Din blames management decisions and spending on election campaigns for eroding the financial reserve until it no longer provided a cushion. This is her account of how the newspaper’s resources were depleted.
“The crisis was not only financial; it was professional too,” she says. Print journalism once dominated, and readers waited each morning for their newspaper. Copies could be reserved at kiosks before they arrived, and readers felt a connection to the publication. Digital media and social platforms have transformed that relationship.
Journalists Syndicate head Khaled El-Balshy told Zawia3 that negotiations with Al-Wafd’s management were among the council’s most important recent bargaining efforts. He considers the sit-in an illustration of journalists’ real conditions across Egyptian newsrooms, rather than a problem unique to one newspaper.
The December survey, he says, revealed the scale of hardship. Low wages and inequitable pay structures recur at many organisations.
“We began negotiating in 2023 to improve Al-Wafd journalists’ wages,” El-Balshy says. At that time, salaries ranged from EGP 1,400 to EGP 2,400. Sustained negotiations secured increases of between EGP 800 and EGP 2,000 over three stages, but did not resolve the underlying problem. The syndicate returned to negotiations to demand implementation of the minimum wage under the new labour-law framework.
For El-Balshy, improving pay cannot be separated from press freedom and freedom of expression. Both must form part of any serious negotiation over the future of the media.
He argues that continued pressure is needed to change employment practices across institutions, whether through the proposed media-development process or through negotiations with the state and other relevant bodies.
Where is the minimum wage?
Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 World Press Freedom Index identified economic fragility as a major threat to journalism. Across the Middle East and North Africa, the organisation described a combination of authoritarian repression and financial instability, with conditions rated difficult or very serious in all countries in the region except Qatar.
Egypt ranked 170th out of 180 countries in 2025, the same overall position it held in 2024. RSF’s analysis also links the Egyptian media’s economic problems to the restructuring of the sector under state influence since 2013 and to low journalists’ salaries.
Egypt’s Labour Law No. 14 of 2025 gives the National Wages Council responsibility for setting minimum pay with regard to workers’ needs and living costs. Article 102 sets out those functions; Article 104 requires establishments covered by the law to implement the council’s decisions as applicable to them. That legal scope matters: the provision should not be described simply as covering every state institution without distinction.
The Journalists Syndicate has called on newspapers and media institutions to implement the EGP 7,000 minimum for their journalists, invoking the new labour law, which came into force in September 2025.
A letter signed by El-Balshy and syndicate secretary-general Gamal Abdel Rahim urged boards and editors to comply, following earlier correspondence on the issue. It cited the National Wages Council decision raising the private-sector minimum to EGP 7,000 from 1 March 2025.
The syndicate also sought adjustments that recognised journalists’ years of experience and service, rather than treating the minimum as the only question. El-Balshy urged organisations to consider further increases to help staff cope with inflation and worsening living costs.
A wage battle followed by a pension battle
Ezz El-Din is fighting for the minimum wage while preparing to leave both the newspaper and the profession. She has only two years left before retirement.
The sit-in and subsequent negotiations brought higher salaries, but she fears that the benefit will be short-lived. By her calculation, her future pension may be no more than roughly EGP 3,000, around half the salary she described. A new struggle awaits: the battle to survive on a pension.
In August 2023, the syndicate council raised its own pension payment by EGP 500, from EGP 2,500 to EGP 3,000. Retired journalists interviewed by Zawia3 want a further increase, pointing to the EGP 600 rise in the training and technology allowance announced in August 2025.
The syndicate pension and a journalist’s employment-related social-insurance pension are distinct payments. Neither should be confused with the training and technology allowance paid to eligible working journalists.
Hussein El-Zanaty, the syndicate council member heading its membership committee, told Zawia3 that the Al-Wafd action was more than a passing protest. It offered an opportunity to reaffirm basic employment rights.
He called it a rare positive example of organised action within a long-established party newspaper. For him, it showed journalists recognising that defending their professional and economic rights is essential.
“Some do not receive the minimum wage; others receive no wage at all. Some even pay to work or to join the syndicate. That is a professional and ethical catastrophe,” El-Zanaty says.
The syndicate has repeatedly demanded compliance from newspaper managements, he says, but many have not responded. He also believes journalists themselves need to be more active in challenging violations and bringing complaints to their union.
El-Zanaty says proposed membership regulations, under discussion at the time of this report, aim to address such practices. They would require genuine wage guarantees and evidence of a financial relationship between a journalist and their employer through formal financial channels.
The membership committee, he says, has submitted a full proposal to the council. One proposed condition would prevent applications being accepted from newspapers that neither pay wages nor document contractual relationships with their journalists.
He urges colleagues to use the syndicate’s support. The Al-Wafd dispute, he argues, may have produced an unexpected benefit by returning decent pay and professional protections to the centre of debate.
A crisis across newsrooms
Eman Auf, a syndicate council member and head of its freedoms committee, told Zawia3 that anger was growing among journalists whose employers had not implemented the minimum wage. She expects other organisations may see sit-ins over low pay.
She describes the Al-Wafd action as inspiring because it restored confidence in collective action. Many journalists, she says, have reached a point where they can no longer tolerate either living conditions or practices they consider humiliating.
Auf estimates that more than 90% of media institutions, including state-owned organisations, do not implement the minimum wage. That is her assessment at the time of the interview, not the same measure or sample as the December 2024 survey.
She describes the campaign as still being at “struggle zero”: a fight for the most basic entitlement. Nevertheless, she expects change because the syndicate council is prepared to support journalists through legal and union action.
The survey’s pay breakdown helps explain the frustration. It reported that 13.1% of respondents received no salary and 7.1% received up to EGP 1,000 a month. Together, that is roughly one in five respondents working unpaid or for no more than EGP 1,000.
A further 18.9% fell in the next band below EGP 3,000, and 32.7% in the band from EGP 3,000 to below EGP 6,000. The remaining 28.2% were at or above EGP 6,000. These are separate wage bands, not overlapping cumulative percentages.
Adding the unpaid and lower-paid groups gives 71.8% of the survey sample below EGP 6,000. This describes the December 2024 survey period, before the minimum rose to EGP 7,000 in 2025.
About two-thirds reported taking additional work to meet their needs, with some working outside journalism. The report cited a figure of 30% for non-journalistic work among those seeking supplementary income.
The employment problems extend beyond salaries. The survey reported that 27.4% of respondents had experienced arbitrary dismissal, and that around 70% of those cases remained unresolved despite syndicate intervention. The figures underline the gap between formal rights and enforceable protection.
The training and technology allowance has consequently become a central part of journalists’ household income. Some 48.6% of survey participants said they depended on it mainly for subsistence, while 34.2% tried to divide it between living expenses and professional needs.
Increasing that allowance may ease immediate hardship, but it cannot substitute for comprehensive wage reform. That is the wider ambition behind the syndicate’s campaign for fair pay.
As discussed by the Egyptian Observatory for Journalism and Media, the government-funded allowance is separate from salary and social-insurance contributions. Reliance on it therefore does not automatically translate into stronger employment-related pension rights. A payment intended to support professional development instead becomes a means of surviving, leaving retirement insecurity unresolved.
The Al-Wafd dispute coincides with official discussion of a new roadmap for the Egyptian media, including presidential directions on media development. Yet while plans to modernise the sector are announced, journalists are fighting to remain in a profession whose resources and freedoms are shrinking.
Fair pay is therefore more than an economic demand. It is part of restoring professional dignity and making independent, responsible journalism possible. Al-Wafd’s action may encourage other newsrooms to articulate grievances that have accumulated for years.
The question is whether any plan to develop the media can succeed without first addressing the living conditions of the people who produce it.
