By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, Dec 23 2014 (IPS)

Since his college days, John Schmitt says, he’s been “very interested in questions of economic justice, economic inequality.”

Photo courtesy of John Schmitt

He served a nuts-and-bolts apprenticeship in the engine room of the labour movement, doing research for several unions’ organising campaigns. Today, he’s an influential proponent of new approaches to low-wage work that have reoriented how many economists and policy-makers understand the issue.

Schmitt is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He also serves as visiting professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and was a Fulbright scholar at the Universidad Centroamericana “Jose Simeon Cañas” in San Salvador, El Salvador. He holds degrees are from Princeton and the London School of Economics.

IPS correspondent Peter Costantini interviewed him by telephone and e-mail between August and December 2014.

Q: Among policy prescriptions for reducing income inequality and lifting the floor of the labour market, where do you see minimum wages fitting in?

A: I think the minimum wage is very important. It concretely raises wages for a lot of low and middle-income workers, and it also establishes the principle that we as a society can demand that the economy be responsive to social needs.

It’s a legal, almost palpable statement that we have the right to demand of the economy that it serve us and not that we serve the economy. It’s not the solution, in and of itself, to economic inequality. But it’s an important first step.Two of the last three increases in the minimum wage were signed by Republican presidents, with substantial support from Republicans in Congress. So it’s a very American institution that has had a long history of bipartisan support.

And it’s an easy first step. It’s something that we’ve had in this country since the 1930s, and it has broad political support. It regularly polls way above 50 percent, even among Republicans. And in the population as a whole, 65 to 75 percent of voters support it.

Two of the last three increases in the minimum wage were signed by Republican presidents, with substantial support from Republicans in Congress. So it’s a very American institution that has had a long history of bipartisan support.

And it’s effective in doing what it’s supposed to do, which is raise wages of workers at the bottom. It does exactly what a lot of people think our social policy should do: reward people who work. Almost everybody agrees that if you’re working hard, you should get paid a decent amount of money for that.

Also, it doesn’t involve any government bureaucracy other than a relatively minor enforcement mechanism. Because everybody knows what the minimum wage is. There’s a social norm and expectation that people who work should get at least the minimum wage. [More]

Q: Beginning in the early 1990s, a new approach surfaced that challenged the old contention that minimum wage increases reduce employment among low-wage workers.

A: It was called the New Minimum Wage research. A lot of economists at the time were looking at the experience of states that had increased the minimum wage, and were finding that state increases seemed to have little or no effect on employment.

It caused a lot of controversy, which is still raging. I think the profession has moved a lot towards the belief that moderate increases in the minimum wage, like the ones that we historically have done, have little or no impact on employment.

I think what most economists are persuaded by is that the empirical evidence is not that supportive of large job losses. There’s just a lot of good research out there that consistently finds little or no negative employment effects.

The textbook model for how the labour market works is just a vast oversimplification. It can be useful in some contexts, but it’s not useful to understand a pretty complicated thing, which is what happens when the minimum wage goes up.

One of the key insights is that employers aren’t operating in a competitive labour market nor are employees. There’s the possibility that employers make adjustments in other dimensions besides laying workers off: they raise their prices somewhat, or they cut back on hours [without layoffs].

And from a worker’s point of view, if they raise your salary by 20 percent and they cut your hours by five or 10 percent you’re still better off, right? Because you’re getting paid more money and you’re working fewer hours. So there are a lot of ways that firms can adjust to minimum wage increases other than laying people off. [More]

Q: So from a worker’s point of view, I still come out ahead. Low-income work is already very unstable.

A: An important ingredient here is labour turnover. There’s a new paper that looks very carefully at what happens to labour turnover rates before and after minimum wage increases, and finds substantial declines in turnover for different kinds of workers.

A different analysis looks at a living wage law that was passed at the San Francisco airport a few years back. They found something like an 80 percent decline in turnover of baggage handlers after the minimum wage went up, the living wage.

People who don’t work in business don’t fully appreciate that turnover is extremely expensive, even for low-wage workers. Filling a vacancy can be 15, up to 20 percent, of the annual cost of that job. The people who have to fill it are managers, using their more expensive time. And meanwhile, you’re losing customers.

So if the minimum wage reduces turnover, which evidence is increasing for, then it can go a long way towards explaining why we see so little employment impact of minimum wage increases. [More]

Q: What happens when cities increase the minimum wage?

A: I have a lot of faith in the democratic process. So when a city focuses on where to set the wage, a lot of people weigh in: business people, workers, unions, community organisations, low-wage workers, local academics.

There’s a city-wide conversation. And I think this is one reason why we consistently don’t see big employment effects: that process usually arrives at some wage that’s a vast improvement over what we currently have and within the realm of what the local economy can afford.

I think we probably consistently err on the side of caution rather than on the side of going too far. [More]

Q: How do you see the 15Now movement, the fast-food workers movement, changing the labour movement?

A: There’s a lot of dynamism behind the fast food and 15 folks and what’s happening in Seattle, a lot of city and state campaigns to increase the minimum wage. They’re putting a focus on wages and wage inequality, and the need to reward people for working hard.

They’re also focusing attention on other issues that are going to be really important in the future: for example, scheduling questions. One of the recurring problems for fast-food and retail workers is not just that their wages are so low, but also that they have little or no control over their schedules.

I think any time you have people agitating for economic and social justice and getting national attention, it’s encouraging for the possibility of turning around three going on four decades of rising economic inequality.

The single most important thing is to keep some oxygen flowing here so that this conversation can continue: the media cover it, people talk about it when they’re having a beer with friends, or when they’re downtown and they see a bunch of McDonald’s workers out making noise. That’s not something we’ve seen a lot of in the last 35 years. [More]

Edited for length and clarity. For full interview, see version on IPS blog. Edited by Kitty Stapp.

Excerpt:

Strikes in July in New York for higher pay for fast food workers. Credit: mtume_soul/ CC by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 29 2013 (IPS)

Workers at fast-food restaurants in 60 cities across the United States went on a one-day strike Thursday, the largest action yet in a strengthening year-long push for higher wages and the opportunity to form unions without retaliation.

The strike affected around 1,000 stores, organisers said, and also included workers in some national retail chains. The push for higher wages coincides with a broader movement to raise the U. S. minimum wage of 7.25 dollars per hour, one of the lowest among developed economies.

For those who took part in Thursday’s strike, median wages were estimated at less than nine dollars an hour, which both workers and labour rights activists say is impossible to live on in almost any part of the country. They are demanding “living wages” of 15 dollars an hour, more than twice the current federal minimum wage.

“Raising wages for low-wage workers is an economic necessity for communities all across the country,” Pastor W.J. Rideout III, with the Inter-Faith Coalition of Pastors in Detroit, said Thursday. “The only way to get our economy going again is to put more money in the hands of consumers. These striking workers are the best stimulus our economy could have.”

Fast-food workers’ low wages stand in startling contrast to the sector’s reported profits of about 200 billion dollars a year."When a parent is forced to work two jobs and still cannot support his or her family, it is clear that there is something very wrong."
-- Mary Lassen

Last year, for instance, McDonald’s alone reported nearly 5.5 billion dollars in profit. The parent company of several other large-scale chains, including Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell, saw its profits grow by nearly 75 percent, to 458 million dollars.

“For too long, large corporations have been able to ignore the needs of their employees while continuing to rake in huge profits,” Mary Lassen, managing director of the Centre for Community Change, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS in a statement.

“When a parent is forced to work two jobs and still cannot support his or her family, it is clear that there is something very wrong. It is time that corporations address the problems facing low-wage fast-food workers.”

A central sector

The industry has responded by warning that higher wages would translate into fewer jobs. Critics also suggest that these entry-level jobs are mostly important only for teenagers and those starting out in the workforce.

“The story promoted by the individuals organising these events does not provide an accurate picture of what it means to work at McDonald’s,” a spokesperson for the restaurant chain told IPS. “Our history is full of examples of individuals who worked their first job with McDonald’s and went on to successful careers both within and outside of McDonald’s.”

Yet a recent study, released in July by the National Employment Law Project, found that little more than two percent of fast-food jobs are managerial, professional or technical, thus providing “significantly limited” opportunities for advancement.

Others note that low-wage jobs in the United States, including those at fast-food restaurants, play a central role for a broad cross-section of workers.

“It is a common myth that very low-wage workers – workers who would see a raise if the minimum wage were increased – are mostly teenagers,” write David Cooper and Dan Essrow, authors of a new briefing paper and researchers with the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

“The reality is that raising the federal minimum wage to 10.10 dollars per hour would primarily benefit older workers. Eighty-eight percent of workers who would be affected by raising the minimum wage are at least 20 years old, and a third of them are at least 40 years old.”

As the United States has stumbled through the aftermath of the 2008-2009 economic downturn, fast-food and other low-wage jobs have become increasingly important, adding some 60 percent of post-recession jobs. That centrality looks set to continue, with government estimates projecting that fast-food jobs will post the sixth-highest growth of all jobs between 2010 and 2020.

For this reason, analysts are now suggesting that low-wage workers – long seen as particularly difficult to organise – will become an increasingly powerful voice in demanding higher compensation.

Falling short

Thursday’s strike came just a day after tens of thousands of people turned out to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the watershed events in the U.S. fight for civil rights.

At the commemoration, President Barack Obama reminded observers that the original marchers were demanding not only racial equality but also economic opportunity.

“It’s along this second dimension – of economic opportunity, the chance through honest toil to advance one’s station in life – where the goals of 50 years ago have fallen most short,” the president said Wednesday.

“[B]lack unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white unemployment, with Latino unemployment close behind. The gap in wealth between races has not lessened, it’s grown,” he stated. “The position of all working Americans, regardless of colour, has eroded.”

In the United States, upward mobility has become far more difficult over the past decade, the president noted, with labourers of all races seeing stagnating wages despite soaring corporate profits.

“The test was not, and never has been, whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a bit wider for a few,” he continued. “It was whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many.”

One indicator of this lack of progress is that, during the 1963 march, protesters demanded a minimum wage that would translate to more than 13 dollars an hour at today’s rates. Even if the government had continued to update the minimum wage over the past half-century merely to keep up with inflation, this rate would today be around 10 dollars an hour.

Some legislative proposals have been made to set the minimum wage at this level, and in January Obama formally supported a modest rise to 9 dollars an hour. Yet all such proposals currently remain nonstarters in the Congress, evidently due to strong pushback from business groups.

Still, public support for an increase in the minimum wage is strong. According to polling carried out last month for the National Employment Law Project, 80 percent of U.S. adults support a 10.10 dollar minimum wage, with strong backing from all demographic and ideological categories.

In response to this public sentiment, U.S. states and cities alike have been stepping in and in just 2013, at least 13 states and several cities unilaterally raised their minimum wages.

Egyptian workers have demanded the right to hold peaceful protests. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jan 24 2013 (IPS)

Workers played a pivotal role in the mass uprising that led to former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s downfall. Now, two years on, the same labour movement that helped topple the Arab dictator is locked in a stalemate with the government and employers over long-denied labour rights and untenable working conditions.

In recent months, thousands of disenfranchised workers across Egypt have taken collective action to secure better wages and working conditions, paralysing sectors of an economy still recovering from the 2011 uprising. The country’s new Islamist-led government has promised to resolve labour disputes quickly and equitably, but faces formidable challenges as it grapples with restive workers, unyielding employers, and depleted state coffers.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the conservative Islamic movement that dominated last year’s parliamentary and presidential polls, ran on a platform that emphasised social justice. Yet the once-outlawed group has a poor track record on worker rights, and a history of anti-union activities.

“We had a revolution but the only change is from (Mubarak’s) National Democratic Party to the Muslim Brotherhood,” says labour activist Kareem El-Beheiry. “The Brotherhood has never done anything for the labour movement, and never supported workers or independent unions.”

President Mohamed Morsi, a former Brotherhood leader, has faced a number of tests since taking office last June. There were over 2,000 labour protests in 2012, with the rate of protests more than doubling during the second half of the year, according to a new study by the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR).

“We cannot but notice the clear failure of Morsi’s administration to resolve these protests or even set a clear plan for dealing with their demands. Rather, the administration has continued to adopt the same old policies, which only aggravates the matter,” the ECESR report said.

Labour Minister Khaled El-Azhary, a prominent Brotherhood member, has repeatedly urged striking workers to return to work while the government considers their demands. He says Egypt’s fragile economy cannot afford any more loss of production and must be given a chance to recover from the 2011 revolution.

Egypt is struggling to plug deficits in the state budget and balance of payments as it burns through its last remaining foreign reserves. Tourism, a key foreign revenue earner, plummeted after the uprising and is still off by 20 percent. Foreign investment has retreated, and many projects remain on hold due to ongoing political and economic uncertainty.

While the government has generally tried to avoid confrontations with striking workers, it has taken a tough stand on those who “obstruct the wheels of production.” In the months following Morsi’s appointment, riot police broke up labour protests and arrested local strike organisers, while public sector employees found engaging in collective actions were fired, transferred or referred to disciplinary hearings.

“More than 200 employees and workers were individually sacked during the first three months of Morsi’s term, and more than 100 others were subjected to investigation after they were arrested while peacefully protesting…In addition, many employees and workers were physically assaulted during their sit-ins by thugs hired by (their) employers and businessmen,” the ECESR report said.

Morsi’s government has also borrowed the old regime’s tactic of using state media outlets to smear labour movements and intimidate their leaders, says Hadeer Hassan, a local labour journalist.

“The Muslim Brotherhood views strikes as undermining the economy and Morsi’s rule,” she says. “Rather than addressing workers’ demands, it has tried to turn public opinion against striking workers by using the press to portray them as traitors and thugs.”

And where that fails, she adds, the same “lies and false accusations of worker sabotage” are fed to sympathetic courts.

At least a dozen workers have been convicted under legislation passed by Egypt’s military-run transitional government in March 2011 that criminalises “economically disruptive” strikes. President Morsi has yet to strike down the controversial law or overturn the sentences, though he has the power to do so.

Meanwhile, the government is formulating new legislation that labour activists fear will restrict freedom of association and re-establish the state’s dominance over syndical activities. An early draft of the Trade Union Liberties Law, intended to replace antiquated and restrictive legislation on union organisation, would have enshrined the right to strike and legally recognised the hundreds of independent unions that have sprung up since Mubarak’s fall.

The draft law was scrapped, however, in favour of a new bill drawn up by labour minister Khaled El-Azhary and other prominent Brotherhood figures. Their version proposes stiff penalties for striking workers who disrupt production. It also curtails union pluralism by requiring each enterprise to select just one trade union to represent its workers.

The bill would complement “anti-union” articles in Egypt’s new constitution, which was passed last month in a highly divisive referendum. Article 52 affirms the right of workers to form syndicates, but another article stipulates that each profession can have only one trade union.

The new legal framework threatens to eliminate many of the more than 1,000 independent trade unions that exist alongside their larger and more established state-controlled counterparts.

That’s the point, says Hassan. “The Muslim Brotherhood only wants unions it can control.” [END]

Egypt’s workers get little support from employers, or unions. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Oct 18 2012 (IPS)

Ahmed Hassanein works in a modern factory in an industrial enclave west of Cairo. He wears a neatly pressed uniform and operates precision calibrated machinery on a line that produces components for foreign-brand passenger vehicles.

When his shift ends, he returns home to a simple two-room flat with no air conditioning and sporadic water and electricity. The bedroom fits a bed and little else. His two children share a small cot in an alcove that was once a balcony.

Hassanein’s salary covers the rent, utility bills, and meals that occasionally include meat or fish. But even with the income his wife earns from a part-time clerical job, his family rarely has money left over at the end of the month.

The 37-year-old industrial worker is just one among countless Egyptians who toil in factories for meagre wages, unable to afford the products they help manufacture.

“My father had a Fiat, which I drove for a number of years until it gave out, but I’ve never bought my own car,” says Hassanein, who like most of his colleagues takes a bus to work.

Hassanein wasn’t born into poverty, he fell into it, along with millions of other middle-class Egyptian families pulled downwards by diminishing purchasing power.

In the four decades since former president Anwar El-Sadat announced his ‘Infitah’ (Open Door) economic policy, private capital has flooded into Egypt on the back of measures that promoted the country as an owner-friendly, low-wage investment destination. Firms enjoyed cheap land, tax holidays and subsidised energy while the state repressed union activity and eviscerated labour standards.

Political economist Amr Adly says market liberalisation and neoliberal economic policies were a boon for foreign corporations and wealthy Egyptians, but the resulting unemployment, corruption, and uneven distribution of wealth were primary factors behind the uprising last year that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

“The economy was growing at seven or eight percent before the revolution, but there was no trickle down effect,” Adly told IPS. “Wages in many sectors lagged far behind inflation.”

Mubarak’s legacy is a country of 83 million people in which a quarter of the population lives below the UN-recognised poverty line of two dollars a day. About 13 percent of Egypt’s 26-million-strong workforce is officially unemployed, and many work in a huge parallel economy where job security is absent.

Wages here are among the lowest in the world. The national minimum wage was set at 700 Egyptian pounds (115 dollars) a month last year after stagnating at 35 Egyptian pounds (under six dollars at today’s rate) for over two decades.

“We want better pay, but every path is blocked,” says Hassanein. “In the end you take your salary and thank God that at least you have a job.”

Under Mubarak, workers were discouraged from unionising – or if they did, required to join one of 24 syndicates affiliated to the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF). Activists say the colossal state-controlled labour organisation served the interests of the government and factory owners by blocking workers’ attempts to strike or engage in collective bargaining.

ETUF’s board was dissolved after the 2011 uprising, but many of its union heads, chosen in sham elections for their loyalty to Mubarak’s regime, are still in place. The federation’s 3.5 million members pay union dues, but receive few benefits or support in return.

When textile worker Kareem El-Beheiry joined a strike to demand better wages, it was his own trade union – in league with the publicly-owned factory’s manager – that tried to stop him.

“The state-backed unions have never respected the rights of workers,” says 27-year-old El-Beheiry, now a project manager at an NGO that helps workers unionise. “Workers are forced to pay syndicate dues every month, but the (official) unions are only interested in supporting the government and company management.”

El-Beheiry was among the 24,000 workers at a state-owned textile mill in the northern Egyptian town Mahalla El-Kubra who defied their official stooge union heads and went on strike in December 2006 over unpaid bonuses. The defiant act sparked a flurry of wildcat strikes now widely seen as a catalyst for the mass uprising that ended Mubarak’s rule.

The strike wave has continued to this day, encompassing every economic sector and region of the country. Last year saw a record 1,400 collective actions, according to Sons of the Land, a local human rights group.

One consequence of the labour unrest is that emboldened workers have increasingly challenged ETUF’s hegemony over trade union activities, organising themselves into independent syndicates that protect their interests, not the state’s. Workers managed to establish four independent trade unions before the 2011 uprising. More than 800 have been formed in the last 18 months, representing an estimated three million workers.

“We’re building independent and democratic unions that are accountable to workers and give them their rights,” says Kamal Abou Eita, president of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), an umbrella for hundreds of independent unions.

But analysts say the new regime, much like its predecessor, wants to keep workers contained and controlled.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Egypt’s new president hails, has extensive business interests and a long history of anti-union activities. The group’s members in government have signalled a continuation of the old regime’s economic policies – which critics say come at the expense of labour wages and security.

“The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t want strong unions,” asserts Hadeer Hassan, a local labour journalist. “They label striking workers as ‘thugs’ and want to prohibit union plurality.”

Egypt’s new labour minister, a prominent Brotherhood member and former ETUF deputy, has submitted a draft law that would require workers in each enterprise to select just one trade union to represent them. If passed, labour rights advocates say the legislation would eliminate most independent unions, which exist alongside their larger ETUF counterparts.

“Then we’re back to the way it was under Mubarak,” says Hassan.

Striking miners who were relased from police custody on Sep. 3 vowed to continue fighting for a minimum monthly wage of 1,495 dollars. Credit: Nat Nxumalo/IPS

By Siyabulela Debedu
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 7 2012 (IPS)

The South African Police Service members who were involved in a bloodbath with striking workers at the Marikana mine in North West Province could face murder charges, sources close to the investigation told IPS.

The possible charges follows the death of 34 mineworkers after police opened fire on them using automatic rifles and pistols on Aug. 16.

According to procedure, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) was brought into investigate the police conduct. However, sources close to the investigation have revealed to IPS that because an autopsy report found that many of the victims were shot in the back while fleeing from the police, the police involved are expected to be charged with murder.

“We have gathered evidence showing that the miners were killed by police. We are going to complete the investigation and they will be charged,” the source told IPS.

“The report indicates that the majority of the miners were running away and they were shot at the back. At least two of the victims were shot and killed by one bullet. It was only a few, who had direct contact with the police, who have been shot from the front,” the source added.

About 3,000 miners, armed with pangas and spears, had been protesting and demanding a minimum wage of 1,495 dollars monthly outside the Lonmin-owned platinum mine when police attempted to break up the demonstration. The incident was the culmination of several days of violent strikes, which saw the death of 10 people, including two police officers.

It is unclear why the police fired, but police officials claimed that the strikers had rushed at them and they responded in self defense. It resulted in the country’s first ever massacre since the advent of democracy 18 years ago.

At the time, 270 mineworkers were arrested for public violence, illegal possession of dangerous weapons, illegal possession of firearms, murder and attempted murder.

But on Sep. 3 the state withdrew the charges against them and they will only appear in court in February 2013.

However, Shawn Hattingh, a researcher and education officer at the International Labour Research and Information Group, told IPS that even if the police are charged with murder, those in power who were responsible for giving the police permission to use live ammunition would most likely not be brought to justice.

“The whole thing was incredibly badly handled or incredibly ineffective, but I don’t think the state will answer for this. I don’t think there is an interest in the state to prosecute high up in the state. We’ve seen it before with politicians being charged and given light sentences or having had them dropped.”

He added that the priority in mining is to protect the mined resources from the mineworkers “and it was clear that violence would be used to protect it.”

“The police was there to protect the mine, our constitution is based on the protection of private property, so in general the state is going to react in the same way,” he said of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry set up by President Jacob Zuma to investigating the killings.

“There are people who aren’t going to answer for this. The Lonmin management won’t be charged with this. The guy who did the shooting will be charged, but he was following orders. There were orders to break the strike that day, the police commissioner made that clear,” Hattingh said.

He said what needed to be clarified was who gave the order to fire on the miners.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ spokesperson Patrick Craven told IPS that there were many unanswered questions that the Judicial Commission of Inquiry needed to address.

“Certainly the role of the police absolutely has to be central to this – we already know from the television footage that they played a role in this and this can’t be dodged. Again it seems from the coverage that these weren’t individual police officers loosing their heads and firing,” he said.

However, the IPID spokesman Moses Dlamini would not confirm the possible charges or the contents of the autopsy reports.

“Once the investigation is completed, the dockets will be forwarded to the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) for a decision on whether anyone should be prosecuted or not.

“If the decision of the DPP is to prosecute, the suspects will then be charged and be put on trial. Our investigation has not been completed and we have not even discussed the case with the DPP,” Dlamini said.

Meanwhile, Hattingh said that the massacre at the mine had been inevitable as there was a history of violent conflict between miners and owners in South Africa.

“The scale (of violence) at Lonmin is vastly bigger that what has happened in the past, but it is not that first time that workers have been killed … The whole history of mining is confrontational and harsh,” he said.

“If you look at what the security on the mines is like, it’s very strict. Communities are kept off their own land with barbwire, workers every day have to go through though security check, there are armed guards all over. You are watched over a lot of the time – it is a militarised environment,” he said.

He said that in South Africa the system of capital accumulation had been about oppressing all workers, especially black workers, and nothing much had changed.

“The ruling classes have changed in the mining industry but the stuff on the ground hasn’t changed … the lowest paid workers – the rock drillers who earn R4,000 (482 dollars) and work deep underground in the most dangerous of jobs – are still black,” he said.

Meanwhile, the miners have vowed to continue to fight for a minimum wage of 1,495 dollars from Lonmin mine owners.

Lungisile Lutsheto was among the miners arrested. He told IPS of his alleged abuse by police while in custody.

“It was bad in the cells. The police special units came to our cells and started to assault us for no reason. Initially, they searched us saying they were looking for cellphones in our possession. When they could not find any, the beating continued repeatedly,” Lutsheto said.

Already 150 statements have been made and cases opened against the police by miners who claimed to have been assaulted while in custody.

*Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams

Behind the numbers at Tahrir Square it was the power of unions that pushed Mubarak out of power. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jul 13 2012 (IPS)

The independent trade unions that have sprung up across Egypt over the last 17 months face an uncertain future, caught between Islamists and the military and operating under labour laws that have not changed since Hosni Mubarak was in power.

“The government and business owners don’t want to respond to workers’ demands or give them rights, so they are opposed to seeing workers establish independent syndicates,” says Kamal Abu Eita, a leader of the independent union movement.

Under Mubarak, all unions were required to be part of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which propped up the regime by blocking any industrial action that would undermine the state’s authority or supply of cheap labour. Membership in the state-controlled body was mandatory for most public sector employees, and union dues were automatically deducted from their salaries.

Activists say the colossal labour organisation worked to prevent its four million members from holding strikes or negotiating for better salaries. It also mobilised large numbers of workers for pro-government rallies and bussed them to polling stations during general elections to vote for the ruling party.

“Successive regimes recognised the power of organised labour and used ETUF to control it,” Tamer Fathy, an expert on labour movements tells IPS. “It was basically an arm of the regime since its creation in 1957.”

Cracks first appeared in ETUF’s hegemony six years ago when factory workers in the northern industrial town Mahalla El-Kubra defied their stooge government union leaders and went on strike to demand unpaid bonuses. Their defiant action resonated with the exploited working class, igniting a wave of wildcat strikes that enveloped every economic sector – and has continued to this day.

The nascent labour movement provided fertile ground for the birth of Egypt’s first independent unions, but little nutrient to sustain them. The four unions that emerged while Mubarak was in power faced hostile workplaces, constant intimidation and harassment from ETUF, and a barrage of legal challenges.

The dictator’s downfall, however, gave union activists more room to operate. Workers have set up over 500 independent syndicates in recent months. The majority have affiliated with two autonomous labour bodies, the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) led by Abu Eita, and the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress (EDLC) headed by former steel worker Kamal Abbas.

EFITU, formed just five days into the uprising against Mubarak, claims an affiliated membership of 281 independent unions comprising over two million workers. The younger EDLC covers about 250 independent unions. The pair, separated primarily by their policies of incorporation, has emerged to challenge the state-backed ETUF, which still claims nearly four million members.

Proposed legislation that would govern union organisation was under review in parliament before it was dissolved in June. Without it, independent syndicates continue to operate in a legal grey zone – hampered by Mubarak-era legislation that only recognises ETUF-affiliated unions.

“There is no existing law to govern independent unions, only a declaration of freedom of association issued in March 2011,” explains Nihal El-Banna of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS), a local labour rights group. “We still need a legal charter to define and organise independent unions – for instance, what they should look like, or the minimum number of members for them to be recognised.”

The absence of regulation has allowed hundreds of loosely-formed syndicates to spring up, though arguably only a handful are in a position to defend their independence.

Adel Zakaria, editor of Kalam Sinaiyyia (Workers’ Talk) magazine, says independent unions whose membership covers the majority of employees in their workplace or sector “have the muscle to get things done.” Smaller unions with shallow roots could be reabsorbed into the state-controlled federation.

ETUF is proving to be a multi-headed hydra. The mammoth organisation was weakened by rulings that dissolved its executive board, put its leadership under investigation for corruption, and pulled the plug on 15 million dollars in annual government subsidies. Yet its core remains intact.

The interim board appointed to administer ETUF is stacked with members of its old guard, while the federation continues to benefit from undemocratic systems set up by the former regime. One example of this – facilitated by state institutions – is mandatory membership dues.

Workers who join independent unions are obligated to pay ETUF dues, even if they cancel their membership.

“There’s really no way around it,” El-Banna tells IPS. “Many professions in Egypt require a licence, but when you go to renew it you must submit a document that proves you paid your annual (ETUF membership) dues. Without this, you can’t renew your licence.”

Many activists believe Egypt’s two main powers, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, are trying to rebuild ETUF as a counterweight to newfound syndical liberties. They claim the generals – opposed to organised labour – have sought to contain worker movements by criminalising strikes and preserving Mubarak-era labour laws.

“The military would prefer a single, official trade union federation that the state can control,” says El-Banna.

Muslim Brotherhood leaders once supported trade syndicate pluralism, but now favour a model that prohibits workers from organising more than one union within any given enterprise. Legislators affiliated to the Islamic group have attempted to hijack the proposed Trade Union Liberties Law – originally intended to support independent unions – and transform it into a bill that bars union pluralism.

Setbacks in formulating progressive legislation could undermine the growth and legitimacy of independent unions. But defiant labour leaders point out that they did not wait for Mubarak’s permission to establish independent unions, and they have no intention of waiting for his successors to approve them.