{"id":18470,"date":"2024-08-31T15:04:03","date_gmt":"2024-08-31T13:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=18470"},"modified":"2026-10-09T04:29:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T02:29:55","slug":"samanoud-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/samanoud-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Samanoud Weaving Workers Strike: Demands for the Minimum Wage Amid a Wave of Arrests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once again, the workers of Samanoud Weaving have followed their colleagues, the Mahalla workers, whose crisis had barely ended with their release when a new batch of prisoners of bread followed in their footsteps, with a common demand between them: the application of the minimum wage.<\/p>\n

The latest crisis for the workers of the Samanoud company, located in Gharbia Governorate in Egypt’s Delta, began when they heard that a new investor would acquire the company, at a time when the management refuses to implement the presidential decision raising the minimum wage<\/a> to EGP 6,000 since last May, leaving the workers at the mercy of the newcomer, with whom the management has not disclosed the nature of its contractual terms, as described by the workers we spoke with.<\/p>\n

After continued intransigence by the management and its total refusal to negotiate over rights, the workers decided to go on strike on 18 August, demanding the application of the minimum wage before the alleged deal, to guarantee their rights. In response, the management rejected the workers’ demand, citing the losses the company has suffered for years. The workers held on to their right and continued their strike despite the violations and restrictions imposed on them, including cutting off the factory’s electricity and arresting nine of them: “Hamdy Shaboun, Hisham El-Banna, Mohamed El-Helw, Tamer El-Degla, Mohamed El-Khamry, Hanem Gohar, Samah El-Mesady (we learned she has rheumatoid arthritis and suffered a blood clot after her arrest, according to the testimonies of her colleagues), Hend Farouk and Soad El-Erian”.<\/p>\n

According to women workers at the factory, the health and financial situation of the families of the detained male and female workers is very bad, as they take turns caring for the children of the detained women every day, while a number of the detainees face the danger of their health deteriorating because they suffer from chronic diseases.<\/p>\n

A woman worker in the company’s garment department tells Zawia3: “I have worked at the company for 22 years. My salary has reached EGP 3,500. My husband died years ago and I did not obtain a pension for him, and I have three children in school.”<\/p>\n

The worker (whom we have not named to protect her personal security) points out that she spends about EGP 600 a month of her salary on transport alone, as she lives in the city of Mahalla, not Samanoud, where the factory is located. She adds: “I do not eat outside the home for fear of spending more, I suffer from a chest allergy because of the factory dust, and I am also diabetic and have blood pressure problems. Despite that, I work on more than one machine, and in return we are always told that the factory is losing money,” wondering about her and her children’s fate if the factory is liquidated or she retires.<\/p>\n

Another woman worker says that she and her husband, who works with her at the same company, suffer from low salaries, and that she cannot prepare one of her two daughters for marriage, while the other, who passed Thanaweya Amma with a high score weeks ago, has still not been able to submit her papers or fulfil her wish to join the faculty of mass communication, because of poverty and the low salary.<\/p>\n

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The Security Sword at the Workers’ Necks<\/h3>\n

As with the Mahalla workers and many similar cases in recent years, the security services bared their teeth and arrested<\/a> nine male and female workers on 25 August.<\/p>\n

According to the testimonies of their colleagues who spoke to Zawia3, the security forces forcibly disappeared all of them and refused to disclose where the workers were being held, until they suddenly appeared before the prosecution, and their detention was renewed at the East Tanta Plenary Prosecution for 15 days, preceded by four days, without the knowledge of any of their lawyers, who had searched for them in all the detention facilities in the governorate.<\/p>\n

As for the circumstances of their arrest, according to eyewitnesses (who will not be named to ensure their personal security), they were surrounded by flagrant violations that terrified the workers and struck fear into their families.<\/p>\n

One of the women workers recounts the arrest of their colleagues: “We were surprised by security men raiding their homes at dawn. They arrested the women workers in their house clothes without allowing them to change. One of them had her child clinging to her clothes, and a security man slapped him in the face and forced him to let go of his mother. We felt we were reliving the stories of the dawn visitors.”<\/p>\n

Another woman worker adds: “They went to the home of our colleague Hisham El-Banna with a huge security force as if he were a terrorist, and snatched him from among his family, blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back, despite his weak health,” pointing to expectations circulating among the male and female workers that new charges will be brought against new workers if they persist in demanding their rights.<\/p>\n

The security presence in labour disputes is no longer limited to arresting workers and throwing them behind bars, as Kamal Abbas, director of the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services, tells us: “Security pressure appears from the first moment a dispute arises between workers and employers, and in most cases the National Security officer becomes a substitute for the management, whose role has become reporting the workers to security instead of negotiating with them, as he handles all communications with the workers, from negotiations tainted with threats and intimidation to the moment of their arrest.”<\/p>\n

Abbas attributes this security situation, which has dominated for years, to the current political system, which he described as “hostile to freedom” and which decided from its arrival to close the public sphere in all its forms, including freedom of expression and even the establishment of unions, and is therefore hostile to all forms of protest, including strikes. He adds that this is the first time this number of women workers has been arrested at once, describing it as “practices specific to the current era only”.<\/p>\n

MP Ahmed Belal<\/strong> describes what happened to the male and female workers as detention, not arrest in its legal sense, since it was carried out without a prosecution warrant, stressing his condemnation of this step.<\/p>\n

Belal criticises, speaking to Zawia3, the security escalation in parallel with the continuing sessions of the national dialogue, which happen to be discussing the issue of pretrial detention, pointing out that this makes citizens lose trust in those discussions, and perhaps in the rule of law as a whole.<\/p>\n

The coincidence of the violations against the workers and the security handling of them with the national dialogue sessions is pointed out by lawyer Azza Soliman<\/strong>, director of the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, who questioned the usefulness of dialogue with a government that sees citizens as soldiers who must listen and obey, or else be punished, adding: “The government does not see us at all.”<\/p>\n

“The dominance of security language at all levels and its control over the fates of workers is the natural result of more than ten years of systematic destruction of the rule of law, in the absence of legal frameworks on the basis of which negotiations can take place,” is how lawyer and human rights defender Azza Soliman explained the scene.<\/p>\n

In her opinion: “The authorities are evading their responsibility towards their citizens by invoking the language of threats and intimidation in their dealings with them. In return, the worker feels oppressed and unable to act, with hunger behind him amid a crushing economic crisis, and repression and prison in front of him.”<\/p>\n

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A woman worker at the Samanoud company says: “I have worked at the company since the age of 14, working while I studied, so I have spent most of my life inside the factory, and yet my salary did not exceed three thousand pounds in the last year. Most of our husbands have no fixed income, and if there is a liquidation or sale, my family and I will be homeless, and if we remain silent about the deteriorating conditions and our stolen rights, we will die of hunger, as salaries are not enough amid successive price rises.” She points out that they demanded the application of the law and the presidential decision on the minimum wage, but the management responded only for administrative staff and supervisors, while the workers did not receive any salary increase.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Administrative Failure<\/h3>\n

“The spinning and weaving sector is one of the most important industrial sectors, contributing prominently to Egypt’s national economy, given the great comparative advantage Egypt enjoys in this industry and its global fame for its high-quality raw material (cotton).”<\/p>\n

The preceding paragraph is from the official page of the Ministry of Investment<\/a>, titled “Explore investment opportunities across Egypt”. The page’s introduction also explains Egypt’s keen efforts to regain its leadership of the textile industries sector through the optimal use of the assets the state possesses in this field, including the worker himself.<\/p>\n

Egypt has a huge and important history in the textile industry that began at the dawn of history, and in modern times the Nasser era paid special attention to this industry. With the opening up and the arrival of the Sadat era, the public business sector law appeared, which the labour movement considers “the root of all evil”, as it essentially opened the door to the privatisation of companies<\/a> on the pretext of losses. Little by little, the state stopped supporting the industry and pumping investment into it, until Youssef Ghali came during the era of former president Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, declaring a privatisation war, which, despite all its ills, succeeded in selling only two factories, as a result of an unceasing labour struggle crowned in 2008 by the famous Mahalla strike, in parallel with a noticeable deterioration in the cultivation of the world’s most famous cotton (Egyptian long-staple cotton).<\/p>\n

According to most of the experts we spoke with, Egypt had a distinguished reputation for its exports of cotton garments and furnishings, yet various managements and even governments have long used the workers as an excuse, blaming them for their own failures and even inciting against them, which human rights defender Azza Soliman agreed with.<\/p>\n

Soliman pointed to the speech of the President of the Republic himself, who announces raising the minimum wage while inciting against workers and blaming them for the failure of those sectors.<\/p>\n

On the state’s utter failure in the Samanoud Weaving experience, Kamal Abbas tells us about his personal experience trying to operate the denim machine, of which there is only one copy in the whole country. He says: “We tried to repair that machine when Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour was minister of industry, and the ministry’s development committee took charge of the file, and the required amount was actually available, but government bureaucracy never completed that step (ironically, that machine is still out of service as these lines are written).”<\/p>\n

According to Abbas, “denim trousers” account for most of Egypt’s ready-made garment exports, reaching 80% of them in 2017, while we rely on importing this fabric at huge sums, a large part of which could be saved if the broken machine were repaired.<\/p>\n

The story of the denim machine, out of service since 2002, and even their latest crisis are not the only events at the company, as the company’s management has a long history of intransigence and attempts to get rid of workers through early retirement, so much so that their number, which was 1,300 workers ten years ago, has now become 550.<\/p>\n

Samanoud Weaving is a joint-stock company in which Mahalla Spinning had the upper hand, and the person in charge of the factory had to be an engineer. However, Mahalla Spinning sold its stake to the National Investment Bank, also government-owned, whose main source of funding is insurance money, and the internal official became a banker affiliated with the bank, which makes understanding development and workers’ problems far removed from his core expertise, according to Kamal Abbas. The political authority responsible for it is the Ministry of Planning and its minister, who also heads the Supreme Council for Wages.<\/p>\n

On wages, Samanoud Weaving is marked by low wages and its shareholders’ refusal to develop them, despite the losses they claim. In attempts to evade the minimum wage, its board submitted a request not to apply the minimum wage to the competent committee of the Supreme Council for Wages, which has not yet decided on the matter. It is worth noting that the minimum wage law opened a door for employers to suspend it by submitting proof that the facility is struggling and unable to pay wages. Meanwhile, according to the male and female workers, exceptional incentives have ranged between only EGP 20 and 60 so far.<\/p>\n

On development, MP Ahmed Belal criticises the losses the factory’s administrators claim, commenting: “It is not befitting for all these officials to evade applying the minimum wage, even considering that the company belongs to the private sector, since all its owners are government bodies.”<\/p>\n

Belal considers the failure to operate the factory efficiently the responsibility of the management, not the workers, proposing that Mahalla Spinning take back and operate the factory and include it under the planned development umbrella for its group of factories, instead of treating it as an “asset”, in the language of banks, that can be profited from by selling it.<\/p>\n

Elham Eidarous<\/strong>, representative of the founders of the Bread and Freedom Party (under formation), talks to us about the factory. She says: “The Samanoud workers have been a crisis of the labour movement for ten years, as they embody all the economic and political problems, including the mismanagement that prevailed in Egypt’s general situation. The company’s future is also surrounded by ambiguity, as the law obliges the factory’s management to inform workers of any transfer of its ownership or the entry of a new investor, and to set conditions to protect workers’ rights, but the management left the matter to rumours and did not care about the workers’ fate.”<\/p>\n

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“I have worked at the factory for 30 years. I am ill and I am over 50. Social insurance stopped paying for my medicines and told me the company had not applied the minimum wage. I went to the management to complain, but they refused to help me and mocked me. And the constituency’s MP always threatens us with dismissal, telling us she will close the garment factory because the women workers refuse to work.”<\/p>\n

Testimony of a Samanoud woman worker<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Strike
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A Legislative Crisis<\/h3>\n

Despite the issuance of the Trade Union Organisations Law<\/a> in 2017, over the past two years the state, represented by the Ministry of Labour, has been obstinate in allowing these organisations to exist, while the labour law is still locked away in drawers, which puts any workers’ protest outside legal frameworks.<\/p>\n

According to labour expert Kamal Abbas: “The Samanoud workers had their union, which was affiliated with the General Union of Spinning and Weaving, but with most of its leaders forced into early retirement after pressure from the company, the union disappeared completely.” According to the workers, they tried to establish a new union, but the ministry obstructed that step. Union subscriptions were also deducted from their salaries even though the union stopped about five years ago.<\/p>\n

“The existence of a workers’ organisation is a necessity that cannot be ignored,” in the view of Elham Eidarous, as it is the party that negotiates their rights, and it can also refute the management’s claims of successive losses, since the law guarantees it access to the company’s accounts, or even knowledge of the details of the planned sale, and can work to defend the workers’ interests.<\/p>\n

On the labour law as well, Kamal Abbas points to the problems of the strike article, which does not criminalise strikes outright but sets conditions that make carrying them out impossible, exposing workers to legal accountability all the time.<\/p>\n

According to the law, “the employer and the competent administrative authority must be notified at least ten days before the date set for the strike, by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, and the notice must include the reasons for the strike and its set duration, in accordance with Article 192 of the law”.<\/p>\n

Elham Eidarous agrees with Kamal Abbas, saying: “Only once in Egypt’s history has a single strike managed to comply with the conditions for striking, as the law itself restricted this right,” noting that breaching this law does not mean imprisoning the workers, but presenting orders for their dismissal to the court, in a way that does not oblige the employer to pay any compensation.<\/p>\n

Abbas points out that workers around the world resort to strikes after negotiations fail, whereas Egyptian workers start with them, since the responsible authorities do not take the initiative to listen to them or try to negotiate with them until after they resort to striking.<\/p>\n

A legislative and legal crisis is the key, according to MP Ahmed Belal, to the crisis of the Samanoud workers, which, as he describes it, will be neither the first nor the last, as he considers that passing a labour law that avoids the problems of the current law would end the successive crises of workers, as would the articles of the minimum wage law that give companies the opportunity to evade their obligation to apply it through the loophole of struggling.<\/p>\n

The MP faults the Supreme Council for Wages for not meeting to decide on the case of the Samanoud workers regarding the pretext of struggling submitted by the management, and considered that the council had approved, through its silence, the violation of their rights.<\/p>\n

Belal had met a delegation of the workers and promised to try to resolve the crisis by submitting a parliamentary question to the ministers responsible for resolving it, intensifying contacts with officials to start negotiations with the workers, and securing the release of those detained.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the constituency’s MP from the Wafd Party, Leila Abou Ismail, threatened the workers with sale and liquidation, especially the garment factory, which employs 320 women, according to eyewitnesses, and in a filmed video<\/a> linked ending the strike to the release of the detained workers. When one of the women workers complained to her that she could not go home because she did not have enough money to feed her young children, the MP replied sarcastically: “Make koshari.” The women workers told us, commenting on the MP’s words, that she threatened them that if the strike continued, a number of workers equal to those currently detained would be arrested.<\/p>\n

For her part, Elham Eidarous, representative of the Bread and Freedom Party, questioned the legislative authority and its role in representing citizens after the MP’s position. Eidarous says: “A representative of the people chose to side with employers at the expense of the workers in this way, inciting against them and violating their civil rights, in a scene broadcast publicly without shame.”<\/p>\n

Zawia3<\/strong> tried today, during a field visit to the factory, to meet the managing director, Abdel Halim El-Naggar, but he instructed a security guard to inform us that we needed permission from National Security before meeting him, then left the site through the back door. At the same time, factory security prevented us from meeting the women workers inside the facility, but we waited until the end of their shift and were able to discuss their conditions as they left.<\/p>\n

According to an administrative circular obtained by Zawia3, the company’s board met last Thursday to review the file of the workers’ work stoppage since 18 August to demand the application of the minimum wage. The management says in its circular that it had indeed contacted the male and female workers since the first day of the strike and informed them of its intention to pay incentives to employees from the revenues generated by executing contracts with clients, on condition that the work stoppage ends, especially after damage occurred in the form of some clients withdrawing work orders in the garment and weaving departments, which created a revenue deficit.<\/p>\n

The board affirmed its approval of a development plan for the company’s production departments and a review of the wage structure, while seeking to serve the employees’ interests and respond to their demands through operating revenues, adding that it is awaiting the decision of the competent committee of the Supreme Council for Wages on its request for exemption from applying the minimum wage and will abide by the committee’s decision. Finally: “As soon as the production and service departments return to work, the management will pay an exceptional incentive of EGP 200 to employees in the production departments, namely the garment and weaving departments and related departments, and an incentive of EGP 100 to employees in the service departments.”<\/p>\n

It is notable that the circular did not mention the nine male and female workers who were arrested, and we learned from lawyers connected to the case that an appeal against the detention decision would be filed today.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting that two years ago, according to the testimonies of the male and female workers who spoke to us, the company’s management tried to persuade workers (about 180 male and female workers) to sign early retirement papers, but the workers were surprised to discover they had been deceived, as they had signed resignations instead of early retirement procedures, and they went five months without receiving their salaries. They describe the company as having a long history of strikes and mistreatment of workers.<\/p>\n

The company was founded in 1974 in Gharbia Governorate and since its inception has been affiliated with Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla, which holds 22% of its capital.<\/p>\n

The scene is made worse by the absence of the official workers’ federation, loyal to the authorities, which has not been heard to take any position in favour of workers for years, according to the director of the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services, Kamal Abbas<\/strong>. Added to this, the company’s workers’ attempts to establish their own union to negotiate with the management have failed, despite the trade union law granting this right. According to the workers, most managements share a deliberate negligence that may destroy the entire industry and leave workers besieged and homeless. Meanwhile, the women workers told Zawia3 today that they fear the private investor and his management, pointing out that the situation is unclear to them, and demanding that laws and regulations not be changed if the company is sold to an outside investor, with all their rights taken into account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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