The Committee for Justice (CFJ) has revealed that the administration of Egypt Spinning and Weaving Company (Ghazl El-Mahalla) has begun hiring a number of workers through one of the subcontracted labor recruitment companies, under temporary contracts lasting only one year, without any guarantees of permanent employment or provision of real health or social insurance, and with wages far below the legal minimum wage of 7,000 Egyptian pounds.
According to the company’s union committee, this step constitutes a “blatant transgression” and an explicit assault on workers’ rights by the company’s management. It represents a form of “disguised privatization of public jobs,” opening the door to treating workers as temporary commodities, stripped of stability or real rights.
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly inaugurated the new “Spinning 1” factory within Ghazl El-Mahalla Company last December, describing it as the largest spinning factory in the world, with a production capacity of 15 tons per day of fine yarns made from extra-long staple Egyptian cotton, fully dedicated to export.
The CFJ views what is happening in Ghazl El-Mahalla as an early and alarming application of the provisions of the new labor law related to labor supply companies, paving the way to turning Egyptian workers into precarious, temporary laborers without guarantees, rights, or job stability.
The CFJ firmly rejects these measures, considering them a flagrant violation of workers’ rights and job stability, and calls for establishing an acceptable level of job security that ensures workers’ rights to health and social insurance, and the regularization of their professional status, in accordance with internationally recognized labor standards and principles of social justice enshrined in Egyptian labor laws.