Optimism of Arab Spring fades for workers in Egypt

Cleopatra, a major ceramics company in the Middle East, once represented a jewel in the crown of Egypt's industrial sector. But the factory's reputation has been tainted.

Employees of Egypt's Cleopatra Ceramics have returned to work after striking to demand overdue wages. Ted Nieters for The National

SUEZ // Out in Egypt's desert, the end of a long shift at the stiflingly hot Cleopatra Ceramics factory comes as a welcome relief for the labourers fasting for Ramadan.

The employees have reluctantly returned to work after weeks of strikes demanding overdue wages and compensation promised months earlier.

Instead, the workers' face-off with the owner of the factory has come to epitomise the struggle that defined the beginning of the revolution in January last year when thousands broke away from the regime's stranglehold to call for better social justice and welfare.

Cleopatra, a major ceramics company in the Middle East and employing 25,000 in Egypt, is one of a few vast structures jutting out of the barren landscape. It once represented a jewel in the crown of Egypt's industrial sector, with the steel and cement industries.

But the factory's reputation has been tainted along with the image of Cleopatra's owner Mohamed Aboul Enein, whom the country's general prosecutor has banned from travelling abroad and who is under investigation for allegedly violating labour laws.

Mr Aboul Enein, a long-time member of the former ruling National Democratic Party, is accused of unfairly firing workers, refusing to honour an agreement he made with the Cleopatra workers' syndicate, as well as not paying his workers their rightful wages. He denies the allegations.

"Life after the revolution is different," says Ahmed Salah, the deputy head of the Cleopatra Ceramics workers' union.

"People think we are using the revolution to benefit ourselves and make some more money on the side but they're wrong. Attitudes have changed and we're not going to sit by anymore watching what is rightfully ours get taken away".

Clutching a handful of handwritten documents, Mr Salah points to a contract that promises labourers of the Ain Sokhna factory in Suez a share of the company's profits equivalent to two months' salary for each of the past three years, signed by Mr Aboul Enein.

The deal also includes paying special allowances for late shifts, the provision of hot meals, and covering security risks in the factory. "We just got one of three instalments so far, that's about 1,000 [Egyptian] pounds [Dh604]," Mr Salah says.

The workers are owed many thousands of pounds more in compensation and wages agreed and signed for by Mr Aboul Enein and the ministry of labour.

"The truth is we are dealing with a body from the former regime," Mr Salah says. "For him we are the joker card he can play whenever he feels dissatisfied."

Mr Aboul Enein has hit back at his critics calling himself the "noblest businessman in the world" and blaming "50 troublemakers" for provoking strikes, according to a report in the state-owned Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram.

"Shame on them," said Mr Abul-Enein, according to the report. "There is no industrial country around the world that sees what my factories see [in terms of rights and conditions]."

Egypt's labour market has become the backbone of an economy increasingly reliant on natural resources imports. The large workforce has drawn in some of the world's biggest emerging economic powers including China, which is testing the waters in Egypt as a source of major investment and as a hub for exporting goods to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

"The main problem of Aboul Enein is that he thinks we're twisting his arms asking for more. He does not accept what happened after the revolution and that rights must be met," says Mr Salah.

Until incremental changes are made in the labour law to cement higher wages and better working conditions, the deadlock between employees and employer will prevail, he says.

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