The Labour Law bill, which received preliminary approval from the Egyptian House of Representatives on 25 February, with discussions to be completed over the coming weeks in preparation for its final passage, sparked wide controversy among political, rights and labour circles, because of the legal provisions it contained that were described as violating international standards.
The law targets private-sector workers, whose number is estimated at about 24,167,395 people, a proportion estimated at more than 80% of the country’s total labour force. They are divided into 37.6% who work inside establishments and 44.7% who work outside them, according to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics.
In November of last year, the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services issued an online document to collect signatures under the title “The new Labour Law and holding community dialogue sessions: a necessity, not a luxury”, after the House of Representatives continued to ignore demands to hold a community dialogue on the draft bill before its passage. The Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services had submitted a request to the Committee on Manpower, Energy and Environment of the Senate to hold hearings including the various labour parties and those concerned with labour affairs, particularly independent trade union organisations. In contrast, the committee confined itself to the participation of the Ministry of Manpower and the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (representatives of the government).
New definitions of bullying and harassment
Article 1 of the Labour Law bill submitted by the government contains 38 definitions concerning everything related to the organisation of the production process. Discussions within the Manpower Committee of the House of Representatives, during the session held on 20 February, focused on many clauses and articles, according to a statement issued by the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services.
The Manpower Committee of the Egyptian parliament set a definition for the two terms “bullying” and “harassment” in the bill. “Harassment” was defined as “every act or behaviour in the workplace or on the occasion of work that constitutes an accosting of others through sexual or pornographic insinuations or hints, whether by gesture, word or deed, or by any means, including electronic means.” As for “bullying”, it was defined as: “every act or behaviour in the workplace or on the occasion of work, whether by word, by a show of force or control over others, or by exploiting their weakness or social status, with the aim of intimidating them or making them an object of ridicule.”
Regarding the rights of working women and leave, the articles regulating women’s rights in the private sector were approved, including leave related to pregnancy and breastfeeding. Agreement was also reached on regulating the work of foreigners in Egypt, as the committee obliged the employer to give the worker, upon leaving work, a certificate stating the duration of their work at the establishment. Article 69 on the work of foreigners was also amended by deleting the “reciprocity” condition, based on objections from the adviser to the Ministry of Labour, which helps facilitate procedures.
The Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services also announced the committee’s approval of Article 78, concerning the Fund for the Protection of Irregular Workers, which will pay social insurance contributions for irregular workers. The committee indicated that the fund will bear these contributions, which helps integrate irregular workers into the insurance system. The committee also approved Article 95, which recognises non-traditional work such as remote work and work through digital platforms, which keeps pace with the ongoing transformations in the labour market and supports modern forms of work using technology.
Furthermore, Article 134 was approved, which regulates conducting medical tests to detect drug use and infectious diseases. Article 35 was also amended to extend the deadline for sending the list of workers to the competent administrative authority from 15 days to 30 days. In addition, Article 59 was amended, obliging an employer with 100 or more female workers to establish a nursery for the children of female workers. Finally, Article 60 on child labour was amended, with the addition of a paragraph consistent with the provisions of the Child Law, which prohibit employing children before the age of 15, while allowing them to be trained upon reaching the age of 14.
Violating international standards
Despite the amendments and new definitions introduced into the bill, it drew criticism from politicians, rights advocates and those concerned with labour affairs, who described the law as inconsistent with international standards and as failing to meet the requirements of the current stage.
Mona Ezzat, director of the Nun Foundation for Family Care and a researcher in economic and social rights, tells Zawia3 that the Labour Law is one of the important laws and the cornerstone of regulating labour relations, and a large sector of citizens in Egypt benefits from it. For this reason, it was necessary, before issuing it, to hold a community dialogue including civil society associations, the media and decision-makers, and a comprehensive social dialogue among the three parties to labour relations (trade unions, employers, and the government represented by the Ministry of Labour) and all affected parties.
The Ministry of Labour held a number of sessions to discuss the law, attended by a number of male and female trade unionists, but Ezzat believes this is not enough, as a law of this importance requires a broader and more comprehensive discussion.
Among the problems from which the current parliament suffers is the way laws are issued, which does not allow for proper listening to different opinions and points of view. Laws are issued by majority, without balance or sufficient responsiveness to opposing opinions, which is an unsuitable climate for issuing the Labour Law. Moreover, the current version of the new law may be worse than the existing law, so Ezzat proposes keeping the old law for the time being.
Ezzat believes that the law violates international labour standards in several respects, the most important of which is the right to strike. It was supposed to be characterised by greater balance, so as to ensure that neither party dominates the other, whether workers or employers, in accordance with international labour standards, which stress the need to achieve a balance that preserves the rights and duties of both parties.
She points out that, whether in the texts of the law or in practice on the ground, there are violations of international labour standards, as male and female workers are subjected to security interference and threats of dismissal, which weakens the collective bargaining process and reinforces the dominance of employers. These violations lead to a disruption of the balance required between the two parties, which contradicts international labour standards that call for balanced labour relations.
A traditional view of employing women
Mona Ezzat adds in her interview that the law still treats women’s work as an exception and not as an inherent right. Although the Sustainable Development Goals aim to raise the rate of women’s employment to 35%, we find that on the ground, for every three women suffering from unemployment there is one man, and we have not yet been able to exceed a women’s employment rate ranging between 20% and 25%.
She explains that the current draft of the law reflects a traditional vision, as it treats women as though their role in work is exceptional, and not a right that must be provided with all guarantees. This starts from the text of Article 11 of the Egyptian Constitution, which stipulates that the state guarantees women the reconciliation of their roles at home and at work, which places additional burdens on them.
Article 11 of the Egyptian Constitution, as amended in 2019, stipulates that: “The State shall ensure the achievement of equality between women and men in all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution…, and shall ensure enabling women to reconcile the duties of the family and the requirements of work. It also undertakes to provide care and protection for motherhood and childhood, female breadwinners, elderly women and the women most in need”.
A study issued by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics in 2015 indicates that women work between 15 and 16 hours a day, and working hours sometimes reach 18 or 20 hours a day, as a result of combining work in the labour market with domestic work. This situation hinders women’s progress in their careers and limits their access to leadership positions, according to Ezzat.
The researcher in economic and social rights points out that the draft law neglected to guarantee a safe working environment. She explains that some European and Arab countries grant equal leave to fathers and mothers for childcare, which requires reconsidering the nursery system so that it becomes available to fathers as it is to mothers, while providing hosting hours that match working hours and at acceptable costs, so that families can benefit from it effectively.
She concludes her remarks by saying that the International Labour Organization recently adopted a new standard added to the fundamental labour standards, namely “a safe working environment”. This new concept includes not only the physical health of workers but also their psychological safety. The draft Labour Law was supposed to include programmes guaranteeing the psychological safety of workers, but unfortunately this did not happen.
International conventions have recognised women’s right to work on the basis of full equality with men. This is through Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as Article 10 of the same covenant.
Article 11 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) also obliges States Parties to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of employment in order to ensure for them, on the basis of equality between men and women, the same rights. It also establishes measures to prevent discrimination against women on the grounds of marriage or maternity in order to guarantee their effective right to work. This convention is part of the Egyptian legal system, and has the force of law that must be respected and implemented by all of the state’s legislative, executive and judicial authorities and by individuals in the private sector.
The conventions of the International Labour Organization also focus on the rights of working women and their equality with men in wages for work of equal value, and in opportunities and treatment for workers of both sexes who have family responsibilities.
The law’s philosophy: the draft’s fundamental dilemma
Hassan El-Barbary, a researcher in labour affairs, believes that there is a fundamental problem in the philosophy of the new Labour Law, as it was built on an economic outlook even though the nature of the law is originally supposed to be social. He explains to Zawia3 that there is a difference between a law whose philosophy is built on an economic outlook and a law that addresses economic and social aspects together in a balanced way. This shows the need to introduce the social dimension into the law in a substantive way.
He continues that the current draft of the law was prepared amid unstable and murky economic conditions, yet articles were included that are based on the assumption of economic stability, which reflects the imbalance between the social and economic components.
The labour affairs researcher believes that the bill has moved away from effectively addressing social issues. For example, in the wages section of the draft law, there is no balance in privileges and in the calculation of wages and increments between private-sector workers covered by the Labour Law and those covered by the Civil Service Law. The current law stipulated that the periodic increment is 7% of the basic wage, but in the draft law we find that this increment equals only 2.7% of the insurance wage. In contrast, the Civil Service Law sets the periodic increment at a minimum of 10%.
He points out that the draft law did not stipulate a minimum for the periodic increment, which constitutes a burden on workers, especially since the current law, which was passed more than 20 years ago, sets the minimum periodic increment at 7%. After all these years, the legislator decides to reduce it to only 3%, which causes great injustice to workers and is not commensurate with the economic changes the country has witnessed from 2003 until 2025.
El-Barbary also believes that this amendment is unfair, since the insurance wage is much lower than the actual wage the worker receives, which includes allowances, transport or bonuses in addition to the insurance wage, leading to a clear contradiction between the calculations of the minimum wage and the minimum insurance wage. This gives room for manipulating the percentages and data that the government presents in the draft law.
He adds that the legislator introduced a clause allowing the employer to submit a request for exemption from the annual wage increase, as happened previously when the government adopted the minimum wage and opened the door to exceptions from its application. This same logic applies to periodic increments, and although the aim of these increments is to keep pace with the rising cost of living, the law opened the way for exceptions, which weakens their basic purpose. He asks: “How can the state allow exceptions for an economically struggling employer while not exempting him from paying taxes?”
In this context, the labour affairs researcher believes that the legislator established a wage structure in the Civil Service Law based on job grades, unlike the Labour Law, in which the legislator neglected to establish a wage structure. Moreover, the current Labour Law, issued in 2003, stipulates that the wage includes everything the worker receives in cash or in kind, while the draft law distinguishes between the basic wage and the variable wage. He asks: “If this is the legislator’s philosophy, why did the government set the minimum wage based on the comprehensive wage and not the basic wage?” El-Barbary considers what is happening tantamount to stripping away gains that the working class has achieved over many years.
He continues that, as for irregular workers, the bill did not provide radical solutions to improve the conditions of this group. It also confused irregular labour with seasonal work, which wastes the rights of many citizens, whose rights the law was supposed to protect and whose development it was supposed to guarantee.
The labour affairs researcher concludes his remarks by saying that there is clear discrimination in wages and benefits between workers in the civil service and regular and irregular workers, as the law ignored unifying social benefits for all working groups in Egypt, even though they are subject to the same conditions in terms of working hours, occupational hazards and injuries. He notes that the current draft of the law does not provide any protection for wages, and is not based on the Protection of Wages Convention No. 95, which defines workers’ rights in the event of delayed payment of wages.
The Journalists Syndicate sends its observations on the Labour Law bill
For its part, the Journalists Syndicate sent its vision regarding the Labour Law bill to Counsellor Dr Hanafy Gebaly, Speaker of the House of Representatives, pointing to more than 20 observations concerning the bill. In his letter to parliament, the head of the Journalists Syndicate, Khaled El-Balshy, called for the syndicate’s observations to be taken into consideration. The most prominent of these observations: “The necessity of unifying the definition of the wage in the bill, adding a clear definition of the minimum wage approved by the government at the national level, and relying only on the term “comprehensive wage”; ensuring the activation of the role of the Supreme Council for Wages in setting a minimum wage in all sectors; amending the annual increment rate to 7% of the comprehensive wage; and activating the role of the professional or labour union in verifying the validity of employers’ requests to reduce increments.”
In addition to: “Abolishing the possibility of requesting a reduction of, or exemption from, paying the minimum wage; establishing an unemployment benefit for every job seeker who is unable to find a job opportunity; preventing arbitrary dismissal by allowing the termination of an open-ended employment contract only with notice of no less than six months; amending the definition of a peaceful strike to include “work boycott” or “not going to the workplace” as one of the forms of strike. Amending Article (204) to allow professional syndicates to organise a strike, or after notifying them, and not only through the labour trade union organisation. Reducing the notice period to the employer and the administrative authority from ten days to three days… and other observations.”
For its part, the Bread and Freedom Party (under formation) warned of the negative effects of this law on the working class, and stressed the need to strengthen trade union freedoms to ensure the achievement of justice and equality in the work environment. The party demanded the abolition of “employment companies”, which it considered an outlet for exploiting workers in a way that contradicts Article 7 of the International Convention (181), which prohibits imposing any fees or costs on workers through these companies. It also demanded raising the periodic increment from 3% to 7% to confront rising inflation rates, along with the need to respect the right to strike in accordance with the Constitution and international standards, and the abolition of the prohibitive conditions contained in the current law, so that notification to the labour office is sufficient.
It is worth noting that the standards set by the International Labour Organization stipulate a set of principles and rights , to ensure fair and safe work environments worldwide. These standards include respect for fundamental human rights, wage protection, job security, working conditions, the labour market and social policies, and industrial relations.
Editorial correction: The first version of the report stated that the House of Representatives approved the Labour Law bill in principle on 20 February; in fact, the preliminary approval came at the session of 25 February 2025.
Editorial correction: The first version of the report stated that the statement referred to was issued by the “House of Labour Unions”; in fact, it was issued by the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services.
