Spinning and Weaving Misr

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The Misr spinning and weaving mill ( Arabic شركة مصر للغزل والنسيج, DMG Šarikat Miṣr li-l-ġazl wa-n-nasīǧ  “Egyptian company for spinning mills and textile products”; Ghazl al-Mahalla for short ) is the largest industrial facility in Egypt . It was founded in 1927, is located in al-Mahalla al-Kubra and currently (February 2011) employs 27,000 workers and is state-owned.

The general manager of the facility was Fuad Abd al Alim (other spelling Fuad Abdel Halim Hassan ) from 2007 to early 2011 .

Infrastructure

The factory has workers' settlements, cooperatives, a club and a hospital.

history

At the time of their marriage, the factory employed 100,000 workers. In 2007 the Egyptian state canceled all debts of the factory.

Strikes

The textile factory has always been a focus of the labor movement since it was founded.

Beginnings

The factory went on strike for the first time in 1938 in order to achieve a reduction from two 12 hour shifts to three 8 hour shifts. This strike is seen as the beginning of a struggle for fundamental changes in the system. Another strike in September 1947 aimed to allow unions in the factory. Tanks stormed the factory to suppress the workers. Three workers were killed and 17 injured.

Shortly after Nasser came to power , there was another strike to remove the company management. This strike was brutally suppressed by the army at first. Nasser, however, used the workers for his revolution to use them against other opposition groups and celebrated Labor Day in the factory in 1952.

1980s

Sadat and Mubarak, on the other hand, had no comparable support from the workforce, so that during their term of office they struck again several times. The strikes in 1986 to push through a wage increase from 26 to 30 days and the strike in September 1988 against the cancellation of the school subsidy, in which pictures of Mubarak were carried on coffins in front of the factory gate, and for the first time "Down with Mubarak" are worth mentioning here. was required of the workers. After this strike, several workers' leaders were arrested and deported to other parts of the country. This suppression was successful for more than 10 years.

2000s

But since workers in the factory were paid below the Constitutional Court's minimum wage of £ 1,200, strikes have raged again since 2004.

In December 2006, the strike in the Misr spinning and weaving mill was the starting point for a large wave of strikes in Egypt. In 2007 a factory director was dismissed under pressure from a member of the Muslim Brotherhood . A strike also took place on April 6, 2008, supported by Ahmed Maher and Israa Abdel Fattah . This quickly resulted in the “ April 6th Youth Movement ”, on whose electronic networking work the 2011 revolution in Egypt was largely based almost three years later .

Revolution 2011

A permanent strike followed in early 2011, coinciding with the 2011 revolution. The strikers wanted the director, Fuad Abd al Alim, to resign. He was accused of deliberately running down the factory.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Ivesa Lübben: The confusion of transition. In: the daily newspaper . March 4, 2011, accessed March 4, 2011 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Rainer Hermann: Prehistory and aftermath. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 17, 2011, accessed February 18, 2011 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Cristina Bocchialini, Ayman El Gazwy: The Factory. In: Al Jazeera . February 22, 2012, accessed February 23, 2012 .
  4. ↑ cf.Cairo Activists Use Facebook to Rattle Regime, WIRED MAGAZINE, Oct. 20, 2008

Coordinates: 30 ° 57 ′ 51 ″  N , 31 ° 10 ′ 38 ″  E