AUC Workers Question Syndicates’ Effectiveness

BY: MARAM SHALABY

After recent concerns regarding the university’s measures to overcome the $9.7 million forecast budget deficit, many workers and staff expressed their concern saying they are not well-represented by their respective syndicates.

“I’ve never tried dealing with the syndicates because I always feel they are not effective; there are two different syndicates so [the workers] don’t really know who to go to,” said Abdallah Ahmed Hassan, a worker in the maintenance department who has been working at AUC for the past 15 years.

Tarek ElMaghraby, president of the independent syndicate at AUC, doesn’t think that there could be any confusion between the roles of the two syndicates.

He said that his syndicate’s presence in all worker-related university committees shows his entity’s effectiveness.

“People know very well who fights for the workers’ rights and who were there in the workers’ strikes and try to help them as much as possible,” he said.

ElMaghraby added that workers fear leaving the other syndicate because members there claim that they are in contact with Egyptian officials and that they are more important than the Independent Syndicate.

Magdy Hindawy, president of AUC syndicate, said that the difference between both syndicates is that the AUC Syndicate works under the Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions and therefore under the Egyptian syndicates law.

Ahmed Hussein, another worker who has been in the maintenance since 2008, said the syndicates should accommodate hard workers.

“We used to leave the Tahrir campus at 3:30 p.m., now we leave at 4:15 p.m. and arrive to our houses at around six or seven in the afternoon,” said Hussein adding that due to the increased hours, workers who would want to uptake part-time jobs to increase their incomes cannot do so anymore.

Hassan added that ever since the syndicates were established, no significant change took place with regards to the wellness and benefits of the workers.

After the January 25 revolution, the Independent Syndicate managed to increase the workers’ incomes and to accommodate hard workers, said ElMaghraby, adding that AUC’s minimum wages were increased from EGP750 to EGP1450, the highest in Egypt.

He also said that they also created the labor rights of oversight committee whose job is to review all the decisions taken by the university regarding the workers.

“[In any institution,] there is a system; workers have rights but also responsibilities, we can only defend the workers’ rights if they respect the system,” said Hindawy.

Hussein thinks that the independent syndicate is doing a better job with the workers’ rights than its predecessors.

“I started getting close to the independent syndicate these days to see whether they are effective or not with the possible overtime cap policy the administration is discussing,” he added, in reference to one of the policies the university is considering in order to overcome the budget deficit.

The Independent Syndicate’s President said that a meeting was held to discuss the possible overtime cap with the administration.

ElMaghraby said that the core problem is that some workers receive overtime fees, claiming that they worked for more hours than what is required of them when really they did not.

“We are here to defend the workers’ rights so I discuss issues such as why the university claims that there are too many workers then hire people to come work temporarily and leave; this violates our workers’ rights because they should be prioritized when it comes to any work that needs to be done in the university,” he added.

Hindawy said that he suggested to Brian MacDougall, executive vice president for administration and finance, in the meeting that the administration should make every worker sacrifice one day of his monthly salary to decrease the budget deficit rather than laying them off.

ElMaghraby told the Caravan that the Independent Syndicate is starting a workshop that will take place for four weeks where they will train workers on how to become syndicate members.

They will also raise awareness regarding worker’s rights because any syndicate can’t work properly without efficient members who work and help out in all processes, ElMaghraby added.

Unlike AUC’s Independent syndicate that was established in Aug. 8, 2011 and contains around 400 members who represent most staff departments in the university, AUC syndicate was established 30 to 35 years ago and contains around 700 members.