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Labor elections without guarantees or respect to the judiciary
The Egyptian labor syndicate elections for 2006-2011 will be held on 13/11/2006 in about 1500 syndicate committee where about 4 million workers will vote who have paid the public syndicate subscription of a total of 18 million workers in Egypt. After that, the board members of 23 syndicates will be elected. There are some remarks on these elections indicating some violations and fear of partiality.
These elections are being held under the deteriorated economic and political conditions that workers are passing through in Egypt, as the public union and its 23 syndicates weren't able to satisfy the needs of the workers. The LCHR is following up these elections and indicating some remarks:
• The membership rolls for the public syndicate need to be better organized, as the elections will be held in one day after only 6 days from opening the door for nomination.
• Workers find so many difficulties when trying to extract the membership certificates for the public syndicate, as about 3 thousand workers were gathering to extract these membership certificates while they were surrounded by the security forces as if they were criminals, and in order to obtain these certificates, the workers must obtain the signature of the head of the public syndicate, the syndicate's secretary general and the syndicate's treasurer, which made hundreds of workers abandon the extraction of the membership certificate because of the difficulty of obtaining these signatures.. When the workers are not able to extract their membership certificates, they will not be able to vote or nominate themselves in these elections.
• The Minister of Manpower has announced that these elections will be supervised by the employees of the public syndicate instead of judiciary officials.
• The labor union, the public syndicate and the syndicate committees represent less than one quarter of the Egyptian workers.
• There are arguments between the Minister of Manpower and the head of the labor union with the Muslim Brotherhood and the left wing only because they fear for their candidates to loose their chairs, not for the benefit of the workers.
The LCHR demands the Minister of Manpower, the head of the labor union and those who organize these elections to make sure of the impartiality f these elections and equal opportunities among the candidates without any gender, political or social discrimination, provide enough time for presenting challenges and answering them, stop the security forces and other parties from molesting the workers, allow the judiciary to have full supervision on these elections and allow CSOs to join in this supervision process in order for workers to elect free and independent labor syndicates that protect workers interests and their rights to suitable working opportunities and decent living.
For more information, please contact the Center.