From driver of change to marginalised actor: organised labour in post-revolutionary Egypt from a comparative perspective

ABSTRACT

The paper analyses why Egypt’s labour movement, while having played a significant role in the run-up to the 2011 revolution, has been increasingly marginalised politically ever since, failing to achieve either significant labour-specific gains and/or broader objectives related to the overall process of political transformation. It does so by investigating Egypt’s movement of independent trade unions, the most dynamic element within the country’s labour movement, from a comparative perspective. Specifically, the paper uses the experience of Brazil’s New Unionism in the 1980s as a contrasting case, identifies the factors that have enabled and constrained what is arguably the most successful example of a New Unionist movement in the Global South, and applies this explanatory framework in an in-depth study on the trajectory of Egypt’s New Unionism since 2011. The study identifies four key differences between the Brazilian and the Egyptian case that help explain the post-revolutionary trajectory of independent labour in the latter: the different sequencing of neoliberal reforms and political liberalisation; the revolutionary character of the Egyptian uprising; the different role of individual movement entrepreneurs; and the lack of significant socio-political allies in the Egyptian case.

KEYWORDS:

• Labour movement
• social movements
• democratisation and regime change
• Middle Eastern politics
• Latin American politics

Acknowledgements

This paper has been written in the context of the research project ‘Socioeconomic protests and political transformation: Dynamics of contentious politics in Egypt and Tunisia against the background of South American experiences’ which was generously funded by the VolkswagenStiftung. A previous version was presented at the 2016 World Congress of the International Political Science Association (IPSA). The authors thank Didier Chabanet, Prisca Jöst, Irene Weipert-Fenner and Laurence Whitehead for comments and Isabel Ruckelshauss and Niklas Markert for research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In line with the contentious politics approach as developed by Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly and colleagues, we do not consider these different theories, mechanisms and factors as competing, but as complementary.

2 To be sure, in the case of Brazil, this strategy ultimately failed, culminating in the 1988 constitution and direct, free and competitive presidential elections in 1989 (see Keck 1992, 20–39).

3 This marks a key difference to the case of Tunisia: While the national leadership of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) had also been coopted and before 2011 refrained from any activity that would challenge the political regime, local UGTT bureaus remained much more autonomous and local UGTT did participate in the protests that preceded the revolution (see Weipert-Fenner and Wolff Forthcoming).

4 In the case of Tunisia, the above-mentioned relative autonomy of local UGTT cadres enabled labour activists to address such grievances from within the official trade union structure. The national leadership of the UGTT joined the uprising only very late in the process, but then quickly adjusted to the new context and presented itself as a key guardian of the revolution (see Weipert-Fenner and Wolff Forthcoming).

5 Interview with Kamal Abu Eita, Cairo, Summer 2011.

6 A roughly similar scheme of compulsory contributions (impostoor contribuiçãosindical ) also existed in Brazil (until 2017). In contrast to Egypt’s independent labour movement, however, Brazil’s New Unionism emerged, to an important extent, within existing unions which were part of the established state-corporatist structure and, thus, generally benefited from these contributions. The problem, in the case of Brazil, was therefore rather a power asymmetry between the national confederation (CUT), which remained outside the official labour structure, and affiliated unions, which ‘enjoyed tremendous autonomy from the labor central due to their bargaining power and resource advantage’ (Sluyter-Beltrão 2010, 63).

7 This new law, in particular, aimed at significantly decreasing the salaries of the state employees by reducing the rate of annual increase of the civil servants’ salaries.

8 Interview with Mohamed Mostafa, ILO officer in Egypt, June 2017, Cairo.

9 This, again, contrasts with the Brazilian case, in which the national confederation CUT did receive contributions from its affiliated unions (Sluyter-Beltrão 2010, 63).

10 Interview with Mostafa Bassiouni, journalist specialised in labour issues, July 2015, Cairo.

11 This transitional committee had been established by the Council of Ministers in August 2011 in order to manage ETUF until new internal elections could take place.

12 At the time of writing, only 108 local trade union committee and one new general trade union were legalised, while EFITU and EDLC were not able to legalise their status.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation (VolkswagenStiftung) [grant number 88427].