Egypt received the lowest rating in the 2024 Trade Union Freedoms Index issued by the Arab Trade Union Confederation, after receiving “Rating 5”, the last position, which is given to the countries least committed to international standards on trade union freedoms and fair labour relations. The confederation attributed this rating to 18 violations documented by its annual report, entitled «No Guarantee of Rights», explaining that these violations directly contradict the international conventions that the Egyptian government has previously signed.
The report pointed to a clear contradiction between the legal text and the practical application of the Trade Union Law (No. 213 of 2017). Although the law theoretically guarantees the freedom to establish trade union organisations and prohibits discrimination in their exercise, reality points to the complete opposite; independent unions face multiple administrative and judicial restrictions, with court rulings and official documents confirming the refusal to recognise the legitimacy of a number of independent unions. The report noted that 11 trade union committees are still awaiting official approval of their registration, which reflects continuing challenges to trade union freedoms in Egypt and constitutes a clear violation of Convention No. (87) on the right to organise.
With regard to fair labour relations, the report documented multiple cases of discrimination between categories of workers, most notably depriving domestic workers of the legal umbrella by excluding them from the Labour Law, as well as discrimination between women and men in wages despite equal jobs and responsibilities, which constitutes a breach of international labour rights standards.
The report also highlighted the phenomenon of child labour, pointing out that the rate of child labour in Egypt has reached 9.3% of all children, meaning that about 1.59 million children are working out of 17.1 million children, and the proportion of working girls among them is 21%. The report explained that nearly half of these children work in occupations classified as “hazardous”, and most of them are children working within the family without pay, which reflects severe weakness in oversight and in the application of legislation on child protection.
The reality of trade union freedoms in Egypt
The Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (No. 87) is one of the fundamental conventions of the International Labour Organization, adopted by the organisation’s General Conference on 9 July 1948. The convention stipulates in its second article that: «Workers and employers, without distinction whatsoever, shall have the right to establish and to join organisations of their own choosing without previous authorisation». Its third article affirms «the right of workers’ and employers’ organisations to draw up their internal rules and to elect their representatives in full freedom, and the public authorities shall refrain from any interference which would restrict these rights». Article (11) obliges member states to «take the necessary measures to ensure that workers and employers are enabled to exercise the right to organise freely».
In the Egyptian context, journalist Hisham Fouad, who specialises in labour affairs, says that although the Egyptian government approved a set of legislative reforms such as the Law on Workers’ Trade Union Organisations (No. 213 of 2017), which were mainly aimed at removing Egypt’s name from the International Labour Organization’s blacklist and obtaining conditional aid from the European Union, those reforms remained formal and were not actually applied on the ground.
Fouad adds, speaking to «Zawia3», that the government claimed to organise an expanded social dialogue on the draft new Labour Law, but limited it to involving independent trade unionists who are ideologically aligned with it, while the genuine independent unions, civil society organisations and professional syndicates were completely ignored. He pointed out that the head of the Journalists Syndicate repeatedly tried to contact the Ministry of Labour to attend the dialogue sessions without receiving positive responses.
Fouad also criticised the government’s handling of the file of women workers, considering that it practises clear double standards; at a time when it promotes equality between women workers in the public and private sectors with regard to maternity leave in the draft new Labour Law, it neglected to include domestic workers under the umbrella of this law, even though they are the category most in need of legal and social protection.
He points to serious precedents of the prosecution and imprisonment of women workers over their rights-based demands, citing the arrest of four women workers from the Wabriyat Samanoud company last year, as well as the arrest of women workers of the National Company for Agricultural Greenhouses in Abu Hammad, Sharqia, and their detention for 15 days for demanding the Ramadan bonus, before they were released last week. He considered that those practices clearly reflect the decline of trade union freedoms and workers’ rights in Egypt.
Fouad concluded by calling on political, trade union and human rights forces to press for turning theoretical reforms into tangible reality, stressing the need to defend the right to organise and to remove the obstacles facing existing unions, such as the Suez Canal Authority union, or those preventing the establishment of new unions. He also called for reviving the role of labour journalism, in light of official control over the media, and for the return of the model of the political labour lawyer such as Nabil El-Hilaly, to spread rights awareness among workers under the current circumstances.
The Trade Union Law between the legislative reality and the dilemma of implementation
The Egyptian government issued Law No. 213 of 2017 on Workers’ Trade Union Organisations and the Protection of the Right to Organise, in response to years of international and domestic criticism concerning the decline in trade union freedoms. Egypt had been placed on the International Labour Organization’s “blacklist” four consecutive times (2008, 2009, 2010), and was then removed from the list after the January 2011 revolution. But it returned to the list again in 2017, the same year in which the law was issued, before it was removed once again in 2022.
Despite Egypt’s name being removed from the blacklist, international and regional criticism of the state of trade union freedoms in the country did not stop, as reflected in the Arab Trade Union Confederation’s latest rating of Egypt in the Trade Union Freedoms Index.
In this context, Elham Eidarous, the founders’ representative of the Bread and Freedom Party (under establishment), describes the reality of trade union freedoms and labour relations in Egypt as “extremely bad”, pointing out that although the 2017 law, amended in 2019, contains numerous problems, it delivered an important democratic gain, namely the recognition of the legal personality of trade union committees for the first time. The previous law had deprived these committees of legal personality and did not allow them any independent action away from the government-run General Federation.
Eidarous explains, speaking to “Zawia3”, that the basic problem is not in the text of the law itself, which is an acceptable framework in general, but rather in poor application and implementation. The first stages of applying the law witnessed widespread violations, starting with the stage of regularising the status of independent unions that had been outside the framework of the previous law, through to the workers’ union elections in the 2018 and 2022 cycles, during which unions were subjected to mass disqualification and multiple violations sponsored by the Ministry of Manpower itself, which emptied the law of its real content.
Eidarous adds that the law included new restrictions, most notably the stringent conditions regarding the minimum number required to establish trade union committees or general unions and federations, in addition to loopholes contained in the Labour Law that were used to restrict workers’ right to strike, by imposing prohibitive conditions for organising strikes and expanding the definition of vital services in which strikes are prohibited, which weakened workers’ capacity for collective bargaining.
Eidarous stresses that the Ministry of Manpower did not merely ignore its role as a mediator between workers and employers, but went beyond that to dealing with workers’ protests under counter-terrorism laws, as workers were arrested on charges such as “joining a banned group” and “spreading false news”, with open-ended pretrial detention used against them. She concludes by saying that workers in Egypt today are besieged by three major pressures: the exploitation of restrictive laws, the poor application of laws that appear balanced, and the use of terrorism laws and political laws against workers’ movements.
In an analytical paper entitled “The Draft Trade Union Freedoms Law: A Historic Turning Point in the State’s Relationship with Workers”, published by the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights in September 2013, the centre considered that the escalation of workers’ protests before the January revolution was one of the main factors in igniting the revolution, especially with the deterioration of labour relations as a result of the neoliberal economic policies pursued at an accelerating pace by Ahmed Nazif’s second government.
The paper explained that the Mubarak regime relied on the security apparatus, represented by the police and the State Security Investigations Service, to confront workers’ protests, while Law No. 35 of 1976, which regulated trade union work at the time, played a fundamental role in aggravating the crisis, as it deprived workers of the right to establish independent unions and forced them to come under the umbrella of the government-run General Federation, which did not represent their interests, which obstructed negotiated solutions and aggravated the problems between workers and employers.
The paper pointed out that this law was one of the main reasons for the International Labour Organization placing Egypt on the short list (blacklist) of countries that violate workers’ rights to establish independent and democratic unions.
The crisis of the union of workers at the Suez Canal clubs: a model of the repression of trade union freedoms
On 26 February, the Ismailia Labour Court decided to refer the lawsuit filed by the trade union committee of workers at the Suez Canal Authority clubs to a resident expert, in order to examine the case papers and the documents submitted by all parties.
The details of the lawsuit go back to the decision of the management of the Suez Canal Authority clubs to suspend the activity of the trade union committee and not recognise it, after the chairmen of the boards of directors of the authority’s three clubs refrained from remitting the subscriptions due to the union, in an attempt the union described as “a direct step to liquidate it”.
The trade union committee’s statement stressed that the case is not limited to the legal dimension, but is part of a continuing struggle to defend the legitimate right to independent trade union organisation, pointing out that the union has repeatedly been subjected to harassment and persecution. The statement explained that the Ministry of Labour is exerting pressure on the union that has hindered its ability to meet its financial obligations towards its members, including paying the salaries of its employees and securing the union’s headquarters and facilities, in addition to deducting the subscriptions for last February from the workers’ salaries without transferring them to the union’s account up to this moment.
In an exclusive interview with Zawia3, Karam Abdel Halim, head of the union of workers at the Suez Canal Authority clubs, believes that the latest report issued by the Arab Trade Union Confederation reflected the painful reality of trade union freedoms in Egypt, considering that what happened to his union, in terms of the suspension of activity, the blocking of the remittance of subscriptions and the collusion of the Ismailia Labour Directorate with the employer, constitutes a clear model of the repression of trade union freedoms and an explicit violation of international charters and of Trade Union Organisations Law No. 213 of 2017.
Abdel Halim stresses that the solution is simple and consists of the government, and the Ministry of Labour in particular, committing to respect the Egyptian Constitution and the laws and international charters it has signed. He affirms that the Ministry of Labour’s practices on the ground contradict its statements claiming respect for trade union freedoms, especially in its dealings with independent unions, and its continuing attempts to weaken the will of general assemblies and to interfere in their work through bodies that have no connection to trade union affairs.
Abdel Halim notes that the main reason for the escalation of strikes and sit-ins inside factories and companies is the absence of unions capable of negotiating on behalf of workers with employers, who benefit from this vacuum. He describes the Ministry of Labour as having turned into a ministry for the “nationalisation” of trade union work in Egypt, despite its repeated denials before the International Labour Organization that any violations have occurred.
Although the current Minister of Labour was a former member of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (the government federation), Abdel Halim believes that the current stage is the worst in the history of trade union freedoms and independent trade union work in the country. He pointed to several international and regional reports that documented those violations, noting that the latest human rights conference in Geneva discussed for the first time the issue of the repression of trade union freedoms in Egypt, in the presence of a government representative, the adviser to the Minister of Labour, in an official attempt to deny these facts. Abdel Halim stressed that the solution is not in denying reality, but in respecting the Constitution and genuinely applying its provisions on the ground.
Abdel Halim explains the importance of unions in achieving the stability of society, through their role in negotiating directly with employers and reducing the intensity of strikes, but he points out that the draft new Labour Law currently being discussed by parliament contains articles that restrict the rights of workers and unions, especially with regard to strikes and cuts to salaries and allowances, which contradicts the Constitution and international charters.
It is worth noting that the Egyptian Constitution stipulates in Article 76 that “Establishing syndicates and federations on a democratic basis is a right guaranteed by law. They shall have legal personality and shall practise their activity freely, contribute to raising the level of competence among their members, defend their rights and protect their interests. The state guarantees the independence of syndicates and federations, and their boards of directors may not be dissolved except by a court ruling, and none of them may be established within regular bodies”.
Egypt recently received the worst rating in the Trade Union Freedoms Index issued by the Arab Trade Union Confederation, at a time when the House of Representatives is completing its discussion of the draft new Labour Law, amid widespread objections to its articles, which are considered a setback for workers’ rights and trade union freedoms.
