Egypt received one of the lowest ratings in the 2024 trade union freedoms index issued by the Arab Trade Union Confederation. Its rating of 5, “No guarantee of rights”, places it among countries with the weakest adherence to international standards on trade union freedoms and fair labour relations. The confederation attributed the rating to 18 violations documented in its annual report, explaining that they directly contravene international conventions previously ratified by the Egyptian government.
The report highlighted a clear contradiction between the text of the Trade Union Organisations Law, No. 213 of 2017, and its implementation. Although the law theoretically guarantees the freedom to establish trade union organisations and prohibits discrimination in exercising that freedom, the situation in practice is very different. Independent unions face numerous administrative and judicial restrictions, with court judgments and official documents confirming the refusal to recognise several of them. The report noted that 11 trade union committees were still awaiting official approval of their registration. It described this as an ongoing obstacle to trade union freedoms in Egypt and a violation of Convention No. 87 on freedom of association and the right to organise.
On fair labour relations, the report documented several forms of discrimination between groups of workers. These included excluding domestic workers from protection under the Labour Law and paying women less than men despite equal jobs and responsibilities, in breach of international labour rights standards.
The report also drew attention to child labour, citing figures from the 2010 National Child Labour Survey, conducted by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics in cooperation with the International Labour Organization. The survey found that 9.3% of children aged 5–17 were engaged in child labour: approximately 1.59 million out of 17.1 million children. Girls accounted for 21% of those in child labour. According to the report, nearly half worked in occupations classified as hazardous, and most worked without pay within their families. These figures highlight weaknesses in monitoring and enforcing child protection legislation; they are historical survey data, rather than an estimate for 2024.
The state of trade union freedoms in Egypt
The Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, No. 87, is one of the ILO’s fundamental conventions. Adopted on 9 July 1948, it establishes in Article 2 the right of workers and employers, without discrimination, to form and join organisations of their choice without prior authorisation. Article 3 protects their freedom to draw up rules and elect representatives, and requires public authorities to refrain from interference that limits those rights. Article 11 obliges ratifying states to take the necessary measures to ensure that workers and employers can freely exercise the right to organise.
Journalist Hisham Fouad, who specialises in labour affairs, says that the Egyptian government’s legislative reforms, including Law No. 213 of 2017, remained largely cosmetic and were not implemented in practice. He argues that their main purpose was to remove Egypt from what is commonly described as the ILO’s “blacklist” and secure conditional assistance from the European Union.
Speaking to Zawia3, Fouad says the government claimed to have organised a broad social dialogue on the proposed new Labour Law, but involved only independent trade unionists who shared its outlook. Other independent unions, civil society organisations and professional syndicates were ignored, he says. He adds that the head of the Journalists Syndicate repeatedly contacted the Ministry of Labour to seek participation in the dialogue, without receiving a positive response.
Fouad also criticises what he describes as a double standard in the government’s treatment of women workers. While promoting equal maternity leave for women in the public and private sectors under the proposed law, it failed to include domestic workers, whom he considers among those most in need of legal and social protection.
He points to serious precedents of women workers being pursued and detained over their demands for rights. He cites the arrest of four workers at the Samannoud textile company in 2024, and the detention of women employed by the National Company for Protected Agriculture in Abu Hammad, Sharqiyah. The latter were held for 15 days after demanding a Ramadan bonus, before being released in the week preceding this article’s original publication. Fouad argues that these practices demonstrate the deterioration of trade union freedoms and workers’ rights in Egypt.
He calls on political groups, unions and rights organisations to press for theoretical reforms to become tangible improvements. He stresses the need to defend the right to organise and remove obstacles facing existing unions, including those associated with the Suez Canal Authority, as well as barriers to forming new ones. He also urges a revival of labour journalism amid official control of the media, and of the tradition of politically engaged labour lawyers exemplified by Nabil El-Hilali, to build workers’ awareness of their rights.
The Trade Union Organisations Law: legislation and the obstacles to implementation
The Egyptian government enacted Law No. 213 of 2017 on Trade Union Organisations and Protection of the Right to Organise after years of international and domestic criticism over declining trade union freedoms. Egypt had been included in the ILO’s list of cases for scrutiny—often described in local coverage as a “blacklist”—in several years, including 2008, 2009 and 2010, before being removed after the January 2011 revolution. It returned to the list in 2017, the year the law was passed, before being absent from it again in 2022.
International and regional criticism of trade union freedoms continued despite Egypt’s removal from the list, as reflected in its latest rating by the Arab Trade Union Confederation.
Elham Eidarous, a representative of the founders of the Bread and Freedom Party, which was still under formation, describes trade union freedoms and labour relations in Egypt as “extremely poor”. Nevertheless, she says the 2017 law, amended in 2019, delivered an important democratic gain despite its many shortcomings: recognising the legal personality of trade union committees for the first time. The previous law denied them that status and prevented independent action outside the government-aligned federation.
Eidarous tells Zawia3 that the main problem lies less in the law’s text, which she regards as a broadly acceptable framework, than in poor implementation. She says the earliest stages involved widespread violations, from the process of regularising independent unions that had existed outside the previous legal framework to the 2018 and 2022 union elections. During those elections, she says, unions faced mass exclusions and other violations overseen by the Ministry of Manpower itself, hollowing out the law’s substance.
She adds that the law imposed new restrictions, notably demanding minimum membership thresholds for establishing union committees, general unions and federations. Loopholes in the Labour Law were also used to restrict strikes, through onerous conditions for organising them and an expanded definition of essential services in which strikes were prohibited. This weakened workers’ ability to bargain collectively.
Eidarous says the Ministry of Manpower not only failed to mediate between workers and employers, but also treated labour protests through the lens of anti-terrorism laws. Workers were arrested on charges such as joining a banned group or spreading false news, and subjected to prolonged pretrial detention. She concludes that workers face three major pressures: restrictive laws, poor enforcement of laws that appear balanced, and the use of anti-terrorism and political laws against labour action.
In an analytical paper published in September 2013, titled “The Draft Trade Union Freedoms Law: A Historical Turning Point in the Relationship Between the State and Workers”, the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights argued that escalating labour protests before the January revolution were among the principal factors that helped ignite it. Labour relations had deteriorated as Ahmed Nazif’s second government accelerated its neoliberal economic policies.
The paper explained that the Mubarak regime relied on the police and State Security apparatus to confront labour protests. Law No. 35 of 1976, which governed union activity at the time, helped deepen the crisis by preventing workers from forming independent unions and forcing them under the government-aligned federation, which did not represent their interests. This obstructed negotiated solutions and aggravated disputes between workers and employers.
The paper identified that law as a major reason Egypt appeared on the ILO’s shortlist of countries under scrutiny for violations of workers’ rights to establish independent, democratic unions.
ZAWIA3 | WORKERS’ RIGHTS
Freedom to organise: what does Convention 87 protect?
Workers and employers can establish and join organisations of their choice without prior authorisation.
Organisations can set their rules and freely elect representatives, without interference by public authorities that restricts these rights.
Ratifying states must take the necessary measures to safeguard the exercise of the right to organise.
The Suez Canal Authority clubs’ union: a case of restrictions on trade union freedoms
On 26 February 2025, the Ismailia Labour Court referred a case brought by the trade union committee representing workers at Suez Canal Authority clubs to a court-appointed expert to examine the case papers and documents submitted by all parties.
The case followed the clubs’ management decision to halt the committee’s activities and refuse to recognise it. The heads of the three clubs’ boards had stopped transferring union dues, in what the union described as a direct attempt to dismantle it.
In a statement, the committee said the dispute went beyond the legal dimension and formed part of an ongoing struggle to defend the legitimate right to independent union organisation. It described repeated restrictions and reprisals. It also said pressure from the Ministry of Labour had hampered its ability to meet financial obligations, including paying staff and maintaining its premises and facilities. Dues deducted from workers’ February salaries had still not been transferred to the union’s account at the time of reporting.
Karam Abdel Halim, head of the union representing workers at the Suez Canal Authority clubs, tells Zawia3 that the confederation’s latest report reflects the painful reality of trade union freedoms in Egypt. He regards the suspension of his union’s activities, the withholding of dues and what he describes as collusion between Ismailia’s labour directorate and the employer as a clear example of repression and a violation of international conventions and Law No. 213 of 2017.
Abdel Halim says the solution is straightforward: the government, particularly the Ministry of Labour, should respect Egypt’s Constitution, its laws and the international conventions it has ratified. He argues that the ministry’s actions contradict its public claims of respect for trade union freedoms, especially its treatment of independent unions, efforts to weaken their general assemblies, and interference by bodies with no legitimate role in union affairs.
He links the rise in strikes and sit-ins in factories and companies to the absence of unions able to negotiate with employers on workers’ behalf. Employers benefit from this vacuum, he says. He describes the Ministry of Labour as a ministry for the “nationalisation” of union activity, despite its repeated denials before the ILO that violations have occurred.
Although the labour minister at the time had previously belonged to the government-aligned Egyptian Trade Union Federation, Abdel Halim considers this period the worst in Egypt’s history for trade union freedoms and independent union activity. He points to international and regional reports documenting violations, and says a recent human rights meeting in Geneva addressed the suppression of trade union freedoms for the first time. A government representative—the labour minister’s adviser—attended in an attempt to deny those findings, he says. Abdel Halim argues that the answer is to respect the Constitution and apply its provisions in practice.
He emphasises unions’ role in social stability through direct negotiations with employers and reducing the intensity of strikes. However, he says the draft Labour Law being debated by Parliament at the time contained provisions restricting workers’ and unions’ rights, particularly on strikes, salaries and allowances, in conflict with the Constitution and international conventions.
Article 76 of Egypt’s Constitution guarantees the right to establish unions and federations on a democratic basis. It grants them legal personality and the freedom to operate, improve their members’ professional competence, defend their rights and protect their interests. It requires the state to safeguard their independence and allows dissolution of their boards only by a court judgment. It also prohibits the establishment of such organisations within uniformed institutions.
Egypt’s placement among the lowest-rated countries in the confederation’s index came as the House of Representatives continued debating the new Labour Law, amid widespread objections to provisions critics considered a setback for workers’ rights and trade union freedoms.
