February 1, 2011
"The Largest Social Movement in the Arab World Since World War II"
Egyptian Labor Unions Lead the Way
By DAVID MACARAY
Let’s give Egypt’s labor unions some credit. According to a report presented at a symposium hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in February, 2010, there have been more than 3,000 labor protests by Egyptian workers since 2004. That’s an astounding number. The report declared that this figure “
Egyptian political protests in both scale and consequence.”
Arguably, the case can be made that Egypt’s current political unrest was inspired and energized by the actions of the country’s labor movement—just as the case can be made that the massive street protests of America’s union workers provided the template for the anti-war protests during the Vietnam war. Joel Beinin, a Stanford University professor, referred to Egypt’s labor activism as “….the largest social movement in the Arab world since World War II.”
Despite the difficulty of making cross-cultural comparisons, one thing is undeniably true: union workers everywhere in the world have the same basic concerns and priorities. They’re all trying to improve their economic lives, and they all recognize the importance of being organized. In fact, the Egyptians just showed how contagious that kind of solidarity can be.
Now, if we could only get 200,000 American union members to follow Egypt’s lead. If we could get 200,000 American workers to demonstrate publicly—say by shutting down Wall Street on May 1 (May Day) in protest of U.S. trade policies—we would receive full coverage on Al Jazeera. How cool would that be?
http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray02012011.html
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