Egypt’s First Free Trade Union

Over at Democracy Digest, Michael Allen writes “Egypt’s first independent union was launched this week in a potentially significant move for the country’s labor movement and for freedom of association under and increasingly authoritarian regime.” It was reported that “the 27,000-member Real Estate Tax Authority Union was formed when workers voted to form a union following a national strike and 12-day sit-in by 10,000 employees in front of the prime minister’s office in Cairo.”

Over the past few years the regime has cracked down on labor and civil society groups in an effort “to curtail the independent political action and organization that emerged during the short-lived Arab Spring of 2005.” Allen explains, “[t]he broader political implications of the independent union’s formation are as yet unclear. According to one analysis, fissures could emerge within the state-backed federation which could have a ‘ripple effect’ in the political arena.”