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Egypt: Unions support AFP strike
AFP employees in Cairo staged 3-day strike.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and French affiliates –SNJ, SNJ-CGT and CFDT – have backed workers striking for fair pay at the Cairo office of AFP news agency.
AFP employees in Cairo staged a 6-hour strike on Tuesday 3 October, 12-hour strike on Wednesday 4 October and are on 24-hour strike today.
Strikers claim that since the devaluation of the Egyptian pound in November 2016 their salary and purchasing power have halved.
Although the office’s editor-in-chief, Emmanuel Parisse, said that AFP is going to compensate the national currency’s inflation in their 2018 budget, no specific amounts have been agreed yet.
“We understand that the agency needs to consolidate the budget, but it is particularly painful that they have chosen to make cuts in our salaries and quality of life for this purpose,” said the staff committee in a statement.
The workers have demanded that the salary revert to the equivalent salary in euros they had back in October 2016, just before the devaluation. They also claim that the salaries in AFP Cairo’s office are the lowest in the Middle East and North Africa region.
The IFJ and the French affiliates –SNJ, SNJ-CGT and CFDT – have backed the workers and their demands.
IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said, “We stand by our colleagues at AFP in Cairo. It shouldn’t be the workers paying the price of the economic instability in the country. We thus urge the management to find a concrete solution to their demands for them and their families as a matter of urgency.”