Labor Protests Test Egypt’s Government

A solid report from the New York Times, though tellingly it includes no mention of the role of years of astronomical U.S. aid in propping up Mubarak's rule:

Day after day, hundreds of workers from all over Egypt have staged demonstrations and sit-ins outside Parliament, turning sidewalks in the heart of the capital into makeshift camps and confounding government efforts to bring an end to the protests.

Nearly every day since February, protesters have chanted demands outside Parliament during daylight and laid out bedrolls along the pavement at night. The government and its allies have been unable to silence the workers, who are angry about a range of issues, including low salaries.

Using an emergency law that allows arrest without charge and restricts the ability to organize, the Egyptian government and the ruling National Democratic Party have for decades blocked development of an effective opposition while monopolizing the levers of power. The open question — one that analysts say the government fears — is whether the workers will connect their economic woes with virtual one-party rule and organize into a political force.

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“The current wave of protests is erupting from the largest social movement Egypt has witnessed in more than half a century,” wrote Joel Beinin, a professor of Middle East history at Stanford and principal author of a report on Egypt’s labor movement for the Solidarity Center, a labor-financed advocacy group in Washington. The report said that 1.7 million workers engaged in 1,900 “strikes and other forms of protest” from 2004 through 2008.