Two incidents close together in time exposed the fragility of the conditions of restaurant workers. In the first, a number of workers at the “Eish w Malh” restaurant found themselves facing a dismissal decision without receiving their financial entitlements for the period they had worked, while the restaurant’s management refused to hand over their employment documents without clear reasons. The second took place at one of the branches of “Sizzler”, after a female customer accused the branch manager of preventing her friend from performing the noon prayer inside the restaurant, before the crisis widened into a broad wave of controversy on social media platforms, which ended with the restaurant’s management issuing an official statement of apology and announcing the termination of the branch manager’s employment.
The details of the two incidents differ, but they reveal a single problem: between sudden dismissal decisions and unpaid entitlements on one side, and termination of employment against the backdrop of a crisis with a customer on the other, the question arises of the extent to which workers in this sector enjoy actual legal and social protection, and of their ability to protect their rights when the employment relationship ends suddenly or disputes arise with management.
“Eish w Malh” Workers: No Entitlements and No Employment Documents
On the “Eish w Malh” incident, Ahmed Sameh Abdel Meguid, 26, one of the workers who were suddenly laid off and did not receive their employment documents, says that he joined the restaurant on the basis of an agreement with the executive chef, with whom he had previously worked, and that he held the position of “de partie”, or head of a section in the kitchen, having agreed before starting work on the nature of his job, his salary and his working hours. He adds, speaking to Zawia3, that the restaurant was going through a phase of reorganisation, and that the executive chef had brought some ingredients at his own expense to run tests of new dishes, before a dispute arose between him and the restaurant’s owner, Dina A.G., which ended with his leaving the place.
Ahmed explains that the restaurant’s owner did not attend regularly in the initial period, then returned after the executive chef left and met with the workers to discuss the new plan, and informed him that she wanted to change the nature of his job so that he would take on cleaning work instead of his duties in the kitchen. He says he objected, explaining that he had joined as head of a section in the kitchen and that changing his work in this way did not fit the agreement, and she replied that this was what was available, and that if it did not suit him, he should leave the job.
Ahmed’s account corresponds to a direct provision of the Labour Law: Article 91 prohibits the employer from assigning the worker work other than what was agreed, except temporarily where there is a necessity to prevent an accident or repair its effects or in the event of force majeure, and permits assigning him other work only if it does not differ substantially from his original work and without prejudice to his rights. This means that the legality of transferring a worker from food preparation to cleaning does not depend on the manager’s authority to distribute tasks alone, but on the nature of the agreed job, whether the assignment is temporary and necessary, and the extent of the difference between the two jobs; and the weight of the matter increases if the worker proves that management used the transfer to pressure him into leaving the job or to punish him without an investigation.
Ahmed continues that he returned the next day demanding his salary for the period he had worked, his employment documents and his papers, and management told him that he could wait two or three months to receive his entitlements, which prompted him to turn to the labour office. He says that one of the office’s employees suggested settling the matter amicably before filing an official complaint, so he asked for the restaurant owner’s number, called her and told her that Ahmed wanted his papers and his entitlements and that he was prepared to wait for the money, and she asked for a ten-day grace period. But he says that when he called her after the grace period expired, he was surprised that she denied knowing him and said that she did not know anyone by that name and had never worked with him; he then went to the restaurant and spoke with the accountant, who told him that he could not pay out any money and that management was the one that made the decision, with the matter ending with him having, to date, received neither his money nor his papers.
Article 108 of the Labour Law sets a clear time limit for this situation: it stipulates that a worker appointed on a monthly wage receives his wage at least once every month, and that if the employment relationship ends for any reason, the employer must pay the wage and all entitlements within a period not exceeding seven days from the date of the worker’s claim, and the article prohibits withholding the wage or part of it without legal basis. Under Article 115, the employer is not discharged from liability for the wage unless the worker has signed a register or statement confirming receipt or the wage has been transferred to his bank account, which means that the employer’s denial of knowing the worker is not enough, since he can be required before the labour office or the court to produce the wage register or transfer statements. Under Article 287, the law punishes violations of the obligations relating to wages and the minimum wage with a fine of between EGP 2,000 and EGP 20,000, multiplied by the number of workers concerned by the violation and doubled on repetition.
Likewise, the absence of a written contract does not extinguish the worker’s rights. Labour Law No. 14 of 2025 entered into force in September 2025, and in Article 89 obliged the employer to draw up a contract in Arabic in four copies, keeping one, handing another to the worker and depositing the remaining two with the social insurance office and the competent administrative authority, with the contract specifying the nature of the work, the wage, its payment date and the agreed benefits; but it allowed the worker and the employer to prove the employment relationship and its rights by all means of proof, including wage transfers, “WhatsApp” messages, shift schedules, attendance cards, colleagues’ testimonies and any correspondence issued by management. Article 92 also obliges the employer to create a file for each worker containing the details of his job, wage, contract, leave and the penalties imposed on him, and to keep it for no less than five years from the end of the relationship; and Article 175 obliges him, when it ends, to return papers and certificates and to hand over a clearance document immediately upon request, and to grant the worker within 15 days a certificate stating the date he joined, the end of his service, the type of his work and his benefits.
According to testimonies obtained by Zawia3, the problem was not limited to newly hired workers, but extended to employees who had spent years at the restaurant, among them the restaurant’s manager, one of the accountants and other workers, a number of whom say they were subjected to termination of the employment relationship and faced difficulties obtaining their entitlements and papers after leaving.
Workers Pay the Price for Weak Oversight, Not the Absence of Rules
The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms placed the “Eish w Malh” incident alongside what happened at “Sizzler”, and considered that the two incidents, despite their different circumstances, reveal a single problem related to the weak presence of the law in regulating the relationship between the worker and the employer: in one of the two cases, management moved quickly under the pressure of public opinion, while in the other the official mechanisms for settling the dispute did not lead to a result in the workers’ favour. It warned that weak enforcement of the Labour Law could push the protection of rights into non-institutional channels such as public pressure and social media platforms, instead of legal procedures being the natural path for resolving disputes, stressing that the effectiveness of protection is not measured by the provisions that criminalise arbitrary dismissal alone, but by the worker’s ability to reach them in good time through swift oversight and judicial mechanisms that prevent the right from turning into a long dispute that the worker does not have the resources to pursue.
Reda Marei, a lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, tells Zawia3 that a number of “Eish w Malh” workers contacted the Initiative, and four of them came to its office; they were in their first months of work, had not received wages for the period they had spent, and management had also refused to hand over their original documents. He adds that they tried to obtain their documents and entitlements and faced accusations of assaulting the restaurant and a summoning of the police when they went to it. He stresses that the employer’s refusal to pay the wage for the period of work or to hand over the documents is not a legally normal procedure, and that the worker has the right to claim his wage, recover his employment documents and obtain compensation for damages when its conditions are met, and that these rights exist under the new Labour Law and previous legislation. Marei does not see what restaurant workers face as linked to the absence of rules so much as to weak oversight of their application, and says that problems of dismissal and non-payment of entitlements recur in the tourism and restaurant sector, especially in times of crisis, citing what happened during the coronavirus pandemic when establishments resorted to reducing their workforce.
The Labour Law does not grant the employer absolute power to dismiss. Article 141 prohibits imposing a disciplinary penalty before notifying the worker in writing of what he is accused of, hearing his statements, investigating his defence and recording this in minutes deposited in his file, with the penalty decision to be reasoned, while under Article 148 the labour court has jurisdiction to impose the penalty of dismissal from service. Under Article 157, an open-ended contract may not be terminated except on the basis of a legitimate and sufficient justification; and if the employer terminates it for an illegitimate reason, Article 165 grants the worker compensation for the damage of no less than two months’ wages for each year of service, and counts the worker’s filing of a complaint or lawsuit against the employer among the illegitimate reasons for dismissal. Applying these provisions requires determining the nature of the contract, the dates on which the work began and ended and the reason for the removal, whether the worker received written notice or was subjected to an investigation, and whether the employer submitted the dismissal request to the labour court; and without these documents, describing the incident as “arbitrary dismissal” becomes a conclusion that precedes legal verification.
The complaint route does not end at the labour office. Under Article 149, the worker or the employer may, within ten days of the dispute arising, request its amicable settlement before a committee chaired by the director of the labour directorate and comprising the two parties, which must complete its work within 21 days; if the settlement succeeds, the committee chair records it in minutes referred to the judge of summary matters so that it becomes enforceable, and if it fails, Article 150 refers the dispute, at the request of either party, to the labour court, which must set a hearing within 20 days. If the dispute concerns dismissal, the court rules on it urgently within three months of the first hearing, and if it sees from the face of the papers that the worker’s claim is valid, it may oblige the employer to pay the equivalent of his wage from the date of dismissal, up to a maximum of six months, pending a ruling on the rights. Accordingly, it is not enough to say that the worker “went to the labour office”, since it is necessary to specify the complaint number and date, whether the settlement committee was formed, whether the employer attended, whether minutes of its failure were drawn up, and whether the worker requested that the dispute be referred to the court; these are dates that make the difference between an administrative complaint that was not completed and a labour lawsuit that has entered the litigation track.
A Sector of More Than 180,000 Establishments
The final results of the Economic Census 2022/2023, the latest detailed data published by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), show that Egypt has 180,585 establishments operating in “food and beverage service activities”, which include restaurants, cafés and similar establishments, employing about 709,967 people, that is, about 4.7% of the total of 3.858 million establishments covered by the census, and also about 4.7% of the total of 15.234 million people employed in economic establishments. The census classified 486,798 people in these activities as paid employees, against 223,169 unpaid, a category that does not necessarily mean forced labour, as it includes establishment owners, partners and family members, but it reveals the extent of the pattern of family and individual establishments that are not always based on written employment relationships. Men work there by a clear majority: the census recorded 674,122 males against 35,845 females, meaning that women made up only about 5% of those employed in the sector during the census year.
As for the circulating estimate of 3.5 million workers in the restaurant and tourism sector, it is not based on the latest economic census, but can be traced to a statement made by the head of the Restaurants, Hotels and Tourist Establishments Division at the Giza Chamber in June 2020, in which he said that reopening the activity after the closure linked to the coronavirus pandemic would serve more than 3.5 million people who had stopped working. The statement did not clarify the method used to calculate the figure or its scope, or whether it included indirect workers, suppliers, and tourism and hotel services, and it is therefore used as an estimate issued by a representative of the chamber during the coronavirus crisis, not a recent official figure for restaurant workers, while the census provides a more precise figure: about 710,000 people employed in 180,585 establishments.
Small Establishments That Are Hard to Regulate
The distribution of establishments by workforce size reveals that the sector consists mainly of small units: between one and four workers work in 137,716 establishments, and between five and nine workers in 34,700 establishments. This means, by Zawia3’s calculation based on the census figures, that about 95.5% of food and beverage service establishments employ fewer than ten people, and the proportion rises to about 98.9% when adding establishments whose workers number between ten and 19, while the average number of people employed is about 3.9 per establishment. This fragmentation helps explain the difficulty union organising and labour inspection face in reaching the sector: the workers are not concentrated in large companies that are easy to count, but are spread across tens of thousands of small restaurants and cafés, many of which have no human resources department, work regulations or regular system for recording attendance and wages.
This intersects with what the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies observed about the sector, as it estimated the number of people employed in it at about 700,000 workers according to the census available at the time the study was prepared, a figure close to the result of the most recent census, and estimated that technical labour and operating workers make up about 70% of those employed. In a paper, the Center highlighted that the precariousness of labour is not linked to the conditions of the individual establishment alone but to the structure of the sector itself, as a large proportion work informally or on temporary contracts, and it recommended encouraging establishments to insure temporary workers and bringing workers under the social insurance law, and establishing an accurate database of restaurants and cafés. This precariousness became apparent during the coronavirus crisis, when the numbers of kitchen and dining-hall workers in fast-food restaurants fell by between 20% and 40%, while many delivery workers continued to work on temporary contracts.
Low Wages and the Longest Working Week
Total cash wages recorded by food and beverage service establishments in the economic census amounted to about EGP 20.017 billion during 2022/2023, distributed across 486,798 paid employees. Dividing total wages by the number of workers and then by 12 months, the arithmetic average reaches, by Zawia3’s calculation, about EGP 3,427 per month per worker during the census year; this does not represent a current average for 2026 wages, but it reveals that the sector rested on a large mass of low-paid labour even before the waves of inflation and subsequent increases. The same census recorded establishments’ contributions to social insurance of about EGP 591.8 million, equivalent to only about 3% of total cash wages, a proportion that raises a question about the size of the workforce actually insured compared with the wages that employers recorded with the insurance authority.
Precariousness is not limited to the value of the wage. According to a statement by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics on the conditions of workers during 2025, the average weekly working hours of paid employees in the food and accommodation services activity reached 50 hours, the highest average among economic activities, ahead of mining and quarrying (49 hours) and transport and storage (48.2 hours). This exceeds the general average for paid employees of 44.9 hours and the average for the private sector within establishments of 48.2 hours; the data combine restaurants and accommodation services in a single category, so they do not allow an average specific to restaurant workers alone to be extracted, but they place workers’ testimonies about long shifts in a broader statistical context. By contrast, the proportion of those enrolled in social insurance did not exceed 37.7% of all paid employees in Egypt during 2025, falling to 29.1% among paid employees within private-sector establishments; no separate figure is published for restaurant workers, which calls for obtaining from the insurance authority the number of those registered under economic activity code No. 56 for food and beverage services.
The law sets a ceiling on these hours: it sets the maximum actual working time at eight hours a day or 48 hours a week, not counting meal and rest periods, and requires rest periods totalling no less than one hour, that the worker not work more than five consecutive hours, and that the period between the start and end of work not exceed ten hours, provided that his presence inside the establishment does not exceed 12 hours. The worker is entitled to a paid weekly rest of no less than 24 hours after at most six consecutive working days, and if he is made to work overtime, he is entitled for a daytime hour to his wage plus at least 35%, and for a night hour 70%, and if he works on his rest day, he is entitled to the equivalent of his wage and a substitute day. The law obliges the employer to post a visible schedule showing working hours, rest periods and the weekly rest day and to notify the administrative authority of it, so that shift schedules and attendance records become essential documents for verifying actual hours and overtime pay.
As for insurance, it is mandatory within two weeks of hiring. Social Insurance and Pensions Law No. 148 of 2019 obliges the employer to open an insurance file for the establishment, and the National Organization for Social Insurance explains that he must submit a request to start activity within two weeks, and fill in an enrolment form for each worker within two weeks of his joining. Since January 2026, the minimum insurable wage has risen to EGP 2,700 and the maximum to EGP 16,700, with the Organization stressing that the law requires insurance on the actual wage, not on a nominal wage lower than what the worker receives, limits that the Organization announced in November 2025. These rules make it possible to test three levels of violation: not insuring at all, insuring after a period has passed since the start of work, or registering with an insurable wage lower than the actual wage; the worker can prove the date work began through the contract, correspondence, transfers or attendance records, and then compare it with the date of his registration with social insurance.
As for the minimum wage, the National Wages Council set the minimum for private-sector workers at EGP 7,000 per month starting from 1 March 2025, and also set for the first time a minimum wage for part-time workers of EGP 28 per hour, and an annual periodic increment of no less than 3% of the insurable wage with a minimum of EGP 250. As for raising the minimum to EGP 8,000, which began to be applied in July 2026, it concerns employees of state bodies and public authorities and was linked to the wage allocations for state employees in the 2026/2027 budget, and it was not issued as a decision binding on private-sector establishments, and therefore the sum of EGP 7,000 remains the latest published minimum binding on the private sector unless the National Wages Council issues a new decision.
Ahmed Saad, media coordinator of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, considers, speaking to Zawia3, that the conditions of restaurant workers need more oversight, as they are among the most vulnerable to violations, especially in small and medium-sized establishments, and that the problem is not related to the level of wages alone but to the nature of the employment relationship, as some of them work without written contracts or regular insurance, and working hours and leave may not be clearly defined, which leaves the worker exposed to sudden dismissal or to not receiving his entitlements. He explains that the workers’ precariousness does not mean a lack of competence, but is linked to their weak bargaining power given their reliance on the job as a main source of income, stressing that they do not necessarily need new legislation so much as they need the application of existing laws, tighter oversight, the development of mechanisms for receiving complaints and protection of complainants from retaliatory dismissal. He points to a complaint he received concerning workers at one of the large hotels who were surprised by the termination of their service without clear reasons, and whose objection led to their names being placed on what he described as a “blacklist” that prevented them from obtaining work at other establishments belonging to the same group, and he stresses that this incident, if proven, reveals a danger that goes beyond losing the job to affecting the worker’s ability to access other work.
Where Do Service Charges Go?
The Labour Law considers the “tip” paid by customers, where custom has established its payment, and the “service charge” paid by customers in tourist, hotel and other establishments, to be part of the elements of the variable wage, and it stipulated that a decision be issued by the Minister of Labour in coordination with the relevant bodies and representatives of workers and employers to determine how it is distributed. Minister of Manpower Decision No. 125 of 2003 previously regulated the distribution of service charges in hotel and tourist establishments, allocating 80% of the proceeds to workers and 20% to the establishment in return for breakage and loss, and dividing the workers’ share into 60% for those in direct contact with customers, 15% for those not in contact and 5% as incentives. In 2013, the Ministries of Tourism and Manpower and representatives of the chambers and unions signed a collective agreement to redistribute the 12% service charge, which included, in one of its phases, allocating 15% for wastage and breakage, using a maximum of 20% for the wages of workers in contact with the service, and distributing 65% between those in contact and those not in contact; these percentages ought not to be presented as the current rule for all restaurants without verifying whether the agreement remains in force or whether a new executive decision has been issued under the 2025 law.
Not all restaurants are subject to a single licensing system: Hotel and Tourist Establishments Law No. 8 of 2022 regulates establishments licensed by the Ministry of Tourism, while ordinary restaurants and cafés are subject to Public Shops Law No. 154 of 2019. The Egyptian Tax Authority explained that tourist restaurants are subject to value added tax, as are non-tourist restaurants under conditions that include being located inside shopping centres, airports and tourist areas, belonging to chains and brands, providing their services electronically, or imposing service charges. This overlap makes service charges an independent focus of investigation: does the establishment impose charges on the bill? How much are their monthly proceeds? Do they appear in the workers’ payrolls? What proportion do dining-hall, kitchen, cleaning and delivery workers receive? And does the establishment use part of them to make up the fixed wage instead of treating it as an independent variable element?
Broad Inspection Without Sector Data
The Minister of Labour announced that the General Department of Inspection carried out, between 1 May 2025 and the end of April 2026, about 15,716 campaigns, which included inspecting 251,639 establishments and reached 2,670,635 workers, aiming to monitor the application of the Labour Law, the minimum wage and occupational safety and health requirements, figures that the State Information Service published in May 2026. The number of establishments the ministry said it inspected is equivalent to about 6.5% of the total of 3.858 million establishments counted by the economic census, by Zawia3’s calculation, but it is an approximate comparison that is not by itself suitable for measuring inspection coverage, because the ministry did not clarify whether the figure refers to unique establishments or includes repeated visits, and did not publish the distribution of campaigns by activity or governorate. Nor do its data reveal the number of restaurants that were inspected, or the number of violations related to the absence of contracts and insurance, failure to apply the minimum wage, exceeding working hours, withholding workers’ papers or dismissal without procedures, nor the number of complaints by restaurant workers and the proportion of those that ended in settlement and those referred to the courts; without this detail, it is impossible to measure the extent to which inspection bodies reach the 180,000 establishments operating in food and beverage services.
Between Ahmed, who has to date received neither his wage nor his papers, and workers whose service ended after a crisis that turned into a public-opinion case, stands a sector comprising more than 180,000 establishments and about 710,000 people employed, its units fragmented into thousands of small restaurants, most of which employ fewer than ten people, where the working week stretches to 50 hours, while insurance contributions do not exceed a tiny proportion of recorded wages. The provisions that oblige the employer to provide a contract, pay wages on time and insure the actual wage, that prohibit arbitrarily transferring a worker or dismissing him verbally, and that set a specific timetable for complaints, already exist in the 2025 law; but what the incidents, the testimonies and the census and inspection figures reveal is that the existence of the legal rule alone does not protect the worker unless it is accompanied by oversight capable of reaching establishments, mechanisms for receiving complaints and protecting complainants, and a swift settlement that prevents the right from turning into a long dispute that its holder loses before it begins.
