Faisal Abbas 
Egyptian workers are deprived of most of their rights, Cairo, March 15, 2025 (Getty)
“Egypt is one of the 10 worst countries in the world for workers”, this was the summary of the last report of the “trade union freedoms index” in the Arab region in its classification Egypt issued on March 10, 2025, which monitored trade union and labor freedoms during the year 2024. According to the report that the “New Arab” obtained a copy of, the classification of Egypt came among the ten worst countries in the world for workers, in the last position, and in the worst classification (5) that indicates that it is not A guarantee of rights “in this country within” Classification 5 “.
And monitored the report of the trade union freedoms index for the year 2024, issued by the “Arab Union Federation”, 18 violations of the international agreements signed by Egypt on trade union freedoms and fair work relations, under the title “No guarantees of rights.” This is the third time since 2022, Egypt occupies the same “fifth classification”, the worst in the international index of rights and freedoms, as part of the annual report on trade union freedoms in the Arab region, where the same rating was won in 2022 and 2023.
The higher classification group (5) means that workers in the country do not have the right to express their collective opinions due to the government’s failure to guarantee rights. And the “Arab Center for Syndicates”, which issued the report, is part of the International Federation of Trade Unions, and annually issued the “trade union freedoms index”, which consists of five classifications, from No. 1 to 5, where 1 is “the best”, and 5 “worst”, according to the evaluation of countries’ performance in terms of their commitment to international standards of trade union freedoms and fair work relations.
The level of economic development and the size or location of the country are not taken into account because basic rights are considered global, and all workers all over the world have the right to enjoy it. The report is based on documenting violations on “basic rights standards in work”, specifically “the right to freedom of assembly” and “the right to strike”, and based on these criteria, the report monitored Egypt’s violations of international agreements at several points.
According to the Union Freedoms Index, the most prominent negatives, regarding union freedoms in Egypt, were that the Law of the Trade Unions (No. 213 of 2017) allows the right to form union organizations and freedom to practice union activity, and it is prohibited to discriminate on this, “but practical practice reflects otherwise,” according to the report. The report says that “there are judicial rulings and documents that include the illegality of establishing independent unions for workers in different sectors, and there are restrictions before the establishment of these unions,” unlike the face stipulated in the Convention (No. 87), as well as the absence of provisions related to penalties or means of recession.
Also, there are “repeated forms of restrictions on trade union work, such as imposing requirements, excessively and illogically, on the registration of independent unions that were resolved in 2018”, so that 11 union committees are still awaiting registration. With regard to work relations, the index monitored violations of discrimination between workers, whether in depriving groups of them from the legislative umbrella by excluding them from the labor law, such as domestic workers, or discrimination against women by not equating wages with men.
The report also indicated that “there is an increase in the ceiling of interventions in union work by the authorities”, such as defining the competencies of the executive committees and the procedures for electing the general unions by the authorities, imposing detailed rules on the membership of the executive committees and determining their functions, and granting the competent minister the authority to set the statute regulations, the financial system, and the administrative system of trade union organizations, and authorizing it to issue a decision to dissolve the administrative council of the trade union organization.
The report pointed to other violations of workers’ rights in Egypt at the level of occupational safety and health, explaining the sharp decrease in the number of work inspectors assigned to inspection in the field of occupational safety and health. He stated that most of the activities of safety and occupational health inspection were based on large institutions without paying attention to medium and small institutions, which means the expansion of violations in institutions whose number of employees is less than (50 workers).
The government also does not provide information about monitoring activities in the workplace that includes less than 15 workers, and annual reports are free from work inspection activities in agricultural workplaces. The report focused on the issue of wages in light of the defects in Egypt in Egypt and inequality, as well as the failure of factories and companies the implementation of the authorities announced to raise the minimum wages, which reached seven thousand pounds, while institutions are still spending two thousand and three thousand only.
In February, the National Agency Council in Egypt decided to increase the minimum for private sector workers to seven thousand Egyptian pounds (equivalent to 139.36 dollars), instead of only six thousand, but there are labor complaints that they did not spend the previous minimum or before.
The minimum wages in the Egyptian private sector have passed with developments since its approval for the first time in January 2022, as it started with 2,400 pounds, then rose to 2,700 pounds in January 2023, and three thousand pounds in July 2023, then 3 thousand and 500 pounds in January 2024, and six thousand pounds in May 2024, up to seven thousand pounds from March.
The report indicated that the provisions of equality in wage do not fully reflect the principle of equal wage for men and women from work equal value as stipulated in (Convention No. 100). The report of the trade union freedoms index in Egypt touched on the arrest of workers and violations against others, and threats of workers by the authorities.
The report focused on the Egyptian authorities violating international agreements, such as the renewal of the Egyptian judiciary, the period of the union’s imprisonment, Shadi Ali Mohamed, who is accused of belonging to terrorist groups (although he is left), as well as the Egyptian judicial authorities refused to release the blogger Alaa Abdel -Fattah despite the expiration of his five -year term. The report dealt with the names of other workers and trade unionists, such as unionist Ahmed Abdel -Fattah, Assistant Secretary -General of the Syndicate of Workers at the East Delta Transport and Tourism Company, and the worker, Zakaria, the employee of the Ambulance Authority and detained since 2022.
In its annual report issued on the tenth of March 2025, the Union criticized “violations of union rights and freedoms in the Arab region in 2024”, the new draft law of labor, which is currently passed by the Egyptian parliament, and 261 articles out of 297 of the draft law were approved until March 15. He explained that “attempts to hit the union voice in Egypt through the issuance of a new labor bill that exacerbates the fragility of professional relations and gives way to mass demobilization operations.”
The House of Representatives continues to discuss the new labor bill and agree to most of its articles, amid widespread objections to many of its items, foremost of which are strike materials, lower salaries and employment agencies, for fear of arrests. The law regulates the conditions of approximately 30 million workers in private sector facilities, and discussions are scheduled to complete the discussions in the next session.
Article (231) of the new labor bill states that “workers have the right to strike to work to demand what they see as the investigator of their professional, economic and social interests, provided that the friendly settlement methods of disputes are exhausted first”, but this item is not achieved as the authorities have arrested workers who have been hit recently and threatened others. Although the strike was allowed in the previous article, Article (232) of the project that actually aborted this strike is placed, as it stipulates “the necessity of notifying the employer and the competent administrative authority at least ten days before the date of the strike,” which may lose the strike.
Article (234) also prohibited the strike in vital installations that affect national security or provide basic services to citizens, without setting frames on how to define these facilities, so that these vital facilities remain excluded from the strike, which gives power the right to interpret any strike that it disrupts and suppresses national security. The Minister of Manpower, Mohamed Gibran, had said that the new labor law is a balanced legislation between business owners and workers, and represents a kind of stability and job safety of the worker.
Workers and activists criticized the minister’s statements, considering that it is a misleading permit, as the new draft labor law is biased in many of its articles to business owners, nor does it provide clear mechanisms for job safety, as well as actually detracting from the right of workers to strike, according to the articles of the law and the data of human rights organizations and unions, contrary to what Gibran claimed. The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, which is one of the largest Egyptian human rights centers interested in workers ’rights, said that the new draft labor law does not achieve the required balance between workers’ rights and corporate owners. Workers’ unionists emphasized that “the labor law must keep pace with international agreements that guarantee freedom of union organization, which cannot be granted in international covenants and robbing national legislation.”
