The official federation, in the meantime, announced last week the cancellation of Labor Day celebrations since its chairman, Hussein Megawer, faces corruption charges and is undergoing investigations.
Egypt's labor unions have been consistently weakened by the state exercising control over a wide range of issues. Some of these issues have arisen from the stonewalling of employers to increase wages or enhance benefits. But others have grown out of the gradual dismantling of much of the state-owned industrial sector in favor of privatization.
Privatization has had some beneficial effects, since government enterprises were generally inefficient and unable to compete in markets outside Egypt. Some private companies that purchased government-controlled industrial properties were genuinely dedicated to remaining in production with a better competitive environment based on increased efficiencies.
But many others turned out to be a scam. For example, a syndicate of Egyptian investors, or a foreign company, would acquire a state-owned company and thereby privatize it. But instead of retaining the work force to bring about increased efficiencies to boost sales, the new owners dismantled the factories, sold its equipment, with the intention of using the land for non-industrial purposes, for example, tourism.
Government officials were bribed to allow this to happen and the factory labor force was dismissed and sometimes replaced by foreign workers familiar with the planned new incarnation of the one-time factory.
In a move triggered by desperation, workers from a once-profitable privatized factory staged a sit-in in the factory rather than allow all its equipment - and their jobs -- to be shipped elsewhere. Broadcaster Paul Ray has details in his Real News broadcast. (http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=714)
I'm sure many of you remember the infamous photographs from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and the allegation by former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the torture of prisoners was the work of "a few bad apples."
Well, as we learned more and more about "enhanced interrogation" techniques, we believed less and less of what Rumsfeld and his generals (and his president) told us.
But even if there never were any written orders for "enhanced" interrogations, that phenomenon known as "command influence" would probably have got the job done. Command influence means "everyone knows what the boss wants done, so let's get it done!"
Was there not command influence working in the sentencing of a blogger? Was there not command influence working in the attempt to emasculate the labor movement? And was there not commend influence working as military guards snatched protesters out of Tahrir Square, arrested and detained them, and proceeded to do to prisoners exactly what Hosni Mubarak's MPs would have done to them?
I have two questions: First, how will it stop? What will stop it? These kinds of aberrations don't go away by themselves. They're hard enough to change even with the best training money can buy. And here we are dealing with a culture of brutality that has been nurtured by the military for a generation!
Second question: When the Egyptian people finally get to vote for a parliament and a president, will the military accept its new civilian masters?
In the answer, we'll know the future of the Arab Awakening in Egypt.
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