Rattled by rising prices, falling benefits and looming privatization, tens of thousands of Egyptian workers at state-owned industries have been in rebellion. In recent weeks, more than 35,000 workers at nearly a dozen textile, cement and poultry plants have gone on strike in a nation where any strike is illegal and even the smallest public protest can be squelched with police truncheons. Train engineers, miners and even riot police also have walked off the job or held demonstrations in the past 2 1/2 months. The strikers are bucking the government and their own unions to secure better wages and benefits at a time when inefficient state-owned companies are being sold off or scaled down.
See "Explosion of strikes rocks Egyptian firms", Dan Morrison, San Francisco Chronicle, February 19, 2007