EGYPTIANS DEMAND A NEW MINIMUM WAGE

UNCLAS CAIRO 000563 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR NEA/ELA, NEA/RA AND EEB/IDF USAID FOR ANE/MEA MCCLOUD AND DUNN TREASURY FOR MATHIASON AND CONNOLLY COMMERCE FOR 4520/ITA/ANESA/OBERG E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON EFIN EG SUBJECT: EGYPTIANS DEMAND A NEW MINIMUM WAGE REF: Cairo 0150 Sensitive but Unclassified. Not for Internet distribution. -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (U) Demonstrations over rising prices have turned into calls for a new minimum monthly wage for public sector employees. The current minimum wage of LE 40 ($7.20)/month for unskilled workers has not changed since the 1980s. University professors and doctors have joined the call for a new pay scale, and plan sit-ins and a strike on March 23. Textile workers in Mahalla, scene of wildcat strikes in 2006 and 2007, will strike April 6 to demand a monthly minimum wage of LE 1,200 ($218),though the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) supports a demand of only LE 800 ($145)/month. Leaders of the opposition Kefaya (Enough) movement have called on workers to act independently of NDP-controlled trade unions. The GOE tasked the National Wages Council with recommending a new national minimum wage. Both public and private sector contacts believe that workers in market-driven industries are seeing wages/salaries keep pace with inflation, but the same is not true for the public sector. -------------- -------------- Professionals Join Workers in Calling for Higher Wages -------------- -------------- ¶2. (U) Recent demonstrations against rising prices (reftel) have given way to calls for an increase in the minimum wage and new salary scales for public sector professionals. The legal minimum wage, unchanged since the 1980s, is LE 40 ($7.20)/month for unskilled workers, LE 98 ($17.80) for those with a secondary education, LE 108 ($19.63) for those with some post-secondary education, and LE 123 ($22.36) for university graduates. Professors announced they will strike March 23 to demand minimum salaries of LE 1,000 ($181)/month for assistant professors and LE 2,000 ($363)/month for full professors, according to press reports. Professors at public universities currently average LE 420 ($76)/month. Hamdi al-Sayyid, Chairman of the Doctors' Syndicate, told the press that doctors will stage sit-ins at parliament to demand minimum monthly salaries of LE 1,000 ($181). Doctors in public hospitals currently average LE 346 ($63)/ month. ¶3. (U) Speaking at a press conference in February, leftist Tagammu party member Nabil Abdel Ghany said that the spread of unrest to white-collar workers indicates the extent to which inflation is affecting all social sectors. "The government is clashing with doctors and university professors - this regime has no legitimacy." Also at the conference, workers from the state-owned Mahallah Weaving and Spinning Company announced plans for a strike on April 6 to demand a minimum wage of LE 1,200 ($218)/month for all public sector workers, not just those in textiles. The Mahalla workers, who staged wildcat strikes in 2006 and 2007, called on all Egyptians to support the strike. ¶4. (U) Hussein Mugawer, head of the NDP-controlled ETUF, has publicly stated that the labor federation supports a minimum wage of only LE 800 ($145)/month. Leaders of the opposition Kefaya movement have called for a general strike on Labor Day, May 1, saying workers should act independently of trade unions, as Real Estate Tax Authority (RETA) employees did in December 2007. Without support from organized labor, the employees of RETA, an agency of the Ministry of Finance (MOF),went on strike demanding inclusion in a new MOF pay scale. The strike succeeded, emboldening employees to establish an independent labor committee in RETA. -------------- National Wages Council Tasked -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Unrest over wages prompted the GOE to task the National Wages Council with proposing a national new minimum wage. The Council held its first meeting on the topic in early March. Abdel Fatah El-Gebaly, Director of Economic Research at the government Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and a member of the Council, told us the Council will likely recommend a new minimum monthly wage of LE 125 ($22) for unskilled workers, LE 250 ($45) for workers with secondary education, LE 275 ($50) for workers with some post-secondary education, and LE 300 ($54) for university graduates. Unless the new minimum wage is enacted into law by parliament, which is not currently envisioned, it will be binding only for the public sector. ¶6. (U) El Gebaly explained that wages make up only part of public sector employees' actual take-home pay. Employees also receive variable semiannual "bonuses," paid by individual government/public sector entities. Amounts vary depending on year and agency, but often constitute up to 90% of employees' take-home pay. It was meager bonuses, for example, that caused RETA employees to strike. RETA did not have a large budget for bonuses in 2007, but MOF did, prompting RETA employees to demand inclusion in MOF's pay scale, according to El Gebaly. Wages, salaries and benefits make up approximately 94% of the GOE's projected budget of LE 241.5 billion ($43.9 billion) for FY 2007/08. -------------- Public Sector Suffers, Private Sector Thrives -------------- ¶7. (SBU) Although Prime Minister Nazif placed a moratorium on government hiring in 2006, the public sector still employs some 7 million workers, 32% of Egypt's 22 million workforce. According to Alaa Saba of Beltone Financial, it is these workers' wages that are stagnant. Salaries in market-based industries such as construction, telecoms, banking, tourism, manufacturing and oil and gas are keeping pace with inflation. In fact, the private sector is experiencing a shortage of qualified labor, allowing competent workers to demand salaries similar to their earning potential in a developed economy (Note: Embassy Cairo's difficulties in keeping pace with private sector wages, and subsequent retention problems, corroborate Saba's statements). But competent workers often want to leave Egypt, usually taking the first opportunity to do so, even if they have good paying jobs in Egypt. This is a reflection of the corrupt organizational culture in Egypt, which places a premium on political and social connections over competency when it comes to professional advancement. ¶8. (U) In contrast to the private sector, public sector employees and pensioners are not benefiting from Egypt's growth, according to Saba. Inflation has averaged 10% over the last two years. Although the GOE ostensibly increases public sector wages by about the same amount annually, the increase only affects wages, not bonuses. Since wages make up only a small part of most employees' take-home pay, the annual increase results in only minor increases to take-home pay. ¶9. (SBU) Saba's views were echoed by Ahmed Noshi, Director of Research at the Central Bank, who said that wages were keeping up with inflation in some sectors, specifically construction and banking, but not in the public sector. Noshi said that wage data are difficult to come by, as so much of the economy is informal. He noted that the poor quality of government data collection is itself a result of low salaries. If a surveyor working for the Central Authority for Public Mobilization and Statistics is not given transportation costs to conduct wage interviews/surveys outside Cairo, he/she will contrive the data. Supervisors, who are not well paid themselves, will not verify the data, according to Noshi. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶10. (SBU) Public sector employment in Egypt is essentially a quasi-subsidy system, providing wages to millions of workers who produce little output. These workers in turn support up to 28 million people, or roughly one third of Egypt's population, according to the World Bank's Population Council. Ideally, the calls for wage reform would be accompanied by a broader reform of the civil service. As with food subsidies, however, the GOE has shown little political will make the difficult decisions necessary to tackle this complicated and controversial task. RICCIARDONE