Land center issued a new report on "the conditions of temporary employment in the No. (83) of the economic and social rights, and this report is organized around three axes.
First: the crisis of temporary employment in Egypt, which has worsened since Egypt signed the restructuring Convention with the IMF, reaching nearly 3 million people. Those numbers are distributed among the agricultural workers who are in the initial temporary employment with the number of two million workers, followed by construction workers numbered with 500 thousand factors. Then, there are the miners and quarry with 340 thousand workers and, finally, navigation workers with 70 thousand workers, other than 600 thousand employees registered on the item of temporary contracts to the device of the administrative state. Yet, they hadn't been fixed for years in spite of their efforts strive to get to it. So, unfortunately, they became like mine, which is expected to explode at any time. Everyone denies his responsibility, starting with the government and ending with the Federation of Workers, which did not allocate, till now, an internal committee to resolve their problems through the insurance and pensions, which is still studying the possibility of amending their own items in the law of insurance and pensions. While the number of students enrolled in pensions and insurance did not exceed million people.
The problems of temporary employment are similar, to a large extent, in the public and private sectors as well. The most important problem of these problems was that the worker signs his resignation on the time of his appointment. What exacerbated the crisis is the lack of recognition of government to the temporary employment, which was emphasized more than once by Dr. Ahmed Darwish, Minister of State for Administrative Development, who promised to fix those workers at their positions, but this did not happen at all, and they are still laid off from time to time, either for incompetence or abuse of authority to which they work. This was the reason that made them as mines that are expected to explode at any time. On the same time, the economic crisis deepens Egypt a decade ago with aggravated the employment crisis and are suffering from temporary deprivation of rights, both at the level of wages or insurance or a sense of safety at work.
The second axis speaks about forms of protests by temporary workers in many sectors. These protests demonstrate to what extent temporary workers suffered from withdrawal of all rights on all levels; like the level of workers, occupational health, safety and wages. Wages amounted, in some sectors, such as temporary workers at the University of Minya. Intermediate qualifications workers, for decades, had been paid only 70 pounds a month, and qualified senior get paid 90 L.E. per month, and days-off shall be deducted from the low wages, these amounts has not only increased even though the work of some of them lasted for more than 15 years, as they are all insured, no insurance and one, which means that they do not have any rights in pensions as well as the total absence of guarantees of safety and occupational health, which led to the deaths of workers. For example, the sanitation workers in Fayoum, and workers in Al-Azhar tunnel who were injured in the blast which hit the tunnel as a result of the absence of safety factors.
The third axis speaks about the denial of rights of temporary workers to a decent life, where labors' protests, in the first half of 2010 only, had reached 28 protests for the non-recruited workers. On the same context, the number of temporary employment within the public sector in Egypt has reached 600 thousand workers who do not have most of the rights after being eliminated by the government for the benefit of investors who have destroyed any hopes of them in the appointment or in a decent living for themselves and their families. The current system and the government are seeking to abolish the so-called permanent contracts and gradually shifting to a system of temporary contracts. The most important sectors where the temporary employment is located in the sector of education, where the number of temporary workers ranges between 250 to 300 thousand people, in addition to the informal private sector that has no legal framework guaranteeing the rights of the worker and work benefits and insurance, in this sector, numbering about 13 million workers. Temporary employment is deprived from the privileges that represent 80% of the wage of any employee, because the basic wages 20%, whereas the variable remuneration is 80%. At the same time, they are deprived of social and health insurance. Government have begun, in 2007, to arrange for the changing conditions of more than 6 million employees, and turn them from Permanent working (the only privilege remaining in public office) to temporary work, and the expansion in terms of separation and the displacement of staff. Therefore, the government arranged what it called the law of public office, which raised a lot of controversy, making it temporarily down and talked about the amendment, which does not mean, in any way, to stop arrangements to get rid of the staff of the government, as happened with the workers in the public sector.
In the preparation for the passing of a law of public office, the government was planning to get rid of the 1.1 million workers, the services and functions of characters (drivers - Technicians - couriers) and referring them to work in companies specializing in the provision of workers, support services, in the form of a public body to the affairs of hygiene and professional services.
Moreover, it intended to get rid of more than half a million of temporary staff member, as the draft law did not speak, directly or indirectly, about them, as if they do not exist.
The new law of public employment aims to shift from the care for the employee in Law 47 of 1978 (the law of civil servants) to take care of the job as a position and relationship without any care for the employees interests.
The government must adhere to fix the temporary employment and making it permanent as well as the cessation of all forms of manipulation of the legal system of dismissal, and allowing the formation of syndicates that can defend their rights and determine their wages in equality with appointees in all of the advantages enjoyed.
The State should be obliged by setting minimum wage that is not less than 1500 pounds. It is clear that there is a huge confusion in the calculation of the unemployment rate as realistic estimates are higher to a great extent due to the high proportion of non-recruited employees; the unemployment rate reaches about 10% of the total work force by more than 20 million people, and it is the least possible estimation adopted by the center.
As for the serious consequences which was caused because of the economic reform policies and impacted the rights of workers and led to a large increase in the numbers of unemployed citizens, numbers of demobilized persons had reached 450 000 in 1997 number of many demobilized was added to the proportion of the unemployed so far. This has reached the number of workers in the informal sector official rates and reached to 6.9 million workers who are exposed to forms of violations in addition to the weakness of the syndicated movement
On the other hand we would be interested to include in this report some of the recommendations, which we hope will be taken into consideration to stop the displacement of thousands of workers and the most important recommendations:
1 - allow workers to exercise the right to strike and peaceful assembly to amend the text of Article 198 of Law No. 12 for the lifting of prohibitions on the exercise of this right 0
2 - amendment of the law, including trade unions given the right of workers to form independent trade unions and various trade unions away from the standard to enable them to defend their legitimate rights in a peaceful manner.
3 - to force public and private companies to pay social insurance for workers and creating a mechanism to ensure the monitoring of the implementation of the relevant bodies and to compel the government not to speculative funds Social Security and not to act in the interest of the lives of millions who have to pay this money from their efforts.
4 - Ensure that workers on wages and benefits owed under any circumstances, with salaries on time, methods and mechanisms appropriate to ensure the lives of millions of workers
5 - to stop the policies of arbitrary dismissals and transfers of workers as a prelude to the liquidation of the plant or sold to the private sector.
6 - The appointment of temporary workers and give them adequate guarantees for a stable and secure and ensure the rights of labor other bodies, whether governmental or business sector or private sector.
7 - To stop the intervention of some security agencies, which terrorize the workers and pressuring them to express their demands during the fair pay and incentives, or on the time of using the means of protest and strike.