Several hundred protesters at a company affiliated to the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) staged a sit-in strike in front of the company’s headquarters in Ismailia, 120 kilometres east of Cairo. They called for the 7,000 workers affiliated with the SCA to join them, demanding salary adjustments and unpaid incentives. The Suez Canal is one of Egypt’s four main foreign revenue earners, generating nearly 4.8 billion US dollars in 2010. It was the last key earner unaffected by the national crisis, which has reduced remittances, slowed oil and gas exports, and devastated tourism. The closing of the Suez Canal as a result of the labor participation in the popular revolt could very well be the "straw that broke the camels back" and the beginning of a new and hopefully democratic era for Egypt.
Labor rights groups say the outbreak of wildcat strikes across the country was a spontaneous reaction to new investigations into the hidden fortunes of Mubarak and his cronies.
Kareem El-Beheiry, a local labor activist and blogger, said: " "We don’t have any choice at this point – we have to remove the entire regime. Either we win this revolution or Omar Suleiman will kill every last one of us."
EU-Digest
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