On Their Day: Egypt’s Workers Face the Counter-Revolution’s Assault on Their Freedoms and Wages

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists

With wages that barely meet subsistence levels, legislation that undermines workers’ rights, and persecution targeting labor leaders, Egypt’s workers mark Labor Day under grim conditions.
After years of struggle for the right to work, fair wages, and freedom of organization, the Egyptian working class remains deprived of its most basic rights.

Real wages have declined as the state freezes incomes while the cost of living continuously rises. The right to work has been eroded by laws favoring business owners, enabling them to fire, oppress, and displace workers with impunity. The right to organize, which workers had won even before the revolution, is now being confiscated through the empowerment of the state-aligned labor union federation, the marginalization of independent unions, and the persecution of labor leaders.

At a time when the counter-revolutionary regime is crushing freedoms across society, the labor movement is also under siege. Workers are being denied the right to organize independently of state control while security and administrative forces relentlessly pursue labor movement leaders.

This underscores, yet again, that the labor movement is inseparable from the broader society. The working class cannot enjoy its rights to organize and protest in a society dominated by military dictatorship and security apparatuses.

This Labor Day comes as the counter-revolution prepares a new offensive against the working class and people experiencing poverty.

While the state holds its official Labor Day celebrations under the dictator’s supervision, attended by union brokers and beneficiaries, the counter-revolutions legislators and parliament are finalizing labor laws that strip workers of their right to organize, reinforce the dominance of the regime’s puppet union over the labor movement, and grant more privileges to business owners and investors at the expense of workers’ rights.

Even the Civil Service Law, which workers rejected and forced parliament to dismiss, continues to be applied to government employees despite its rejection—an unprecedented constitutional farce.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance is preparing the new fiscal year’s budget, which reduces fuel subsidies and keeps wages stagnant, ignoring the massive surge in prices and further exacerbating the misery of the poor and working-class population.

From its first day, the counter-revolutionary regime has shown its complete hostility to the working class and unconditional support for business owners and investors, implementing the worst economic policies that no previous regime dared to impose.

Yet the Egyptian working class, which has stood firm and fought under emergency law and military rule, refusing to surrender its rights, will not remain idle in the face of a regime implementing the most extreme policies of oppression and impoverishment to serve investors. Despite significant challenges, workers continue their struggle. In the past four months alone, over 500 labor protests have taken place. Meanwhile, labor leaders from the Solidarity Coordinating Committee have called for demonstrations tomorrow on International Workers’ Day, reaffirming that workers’ struggle will persist despite all forms of repression and persecution.

This Labor Day reminds Egypt’s workers of their resilience and resistance against all systems of exploitation and tyranny. It calls to reclaim the labor movement’s role in liberating society and leading the fight against the counter-revolutionary regime.

The movement reaffirms its solidarity with workers’ struggles at their workplaces and during tomorrow’s protest, hoping that the coming year will see the working class overcoming the obstacles that weaken the impact of their immense struggle on the political scene.