The Fifth Circuit of the West Alexandria Court decided to postpone the consideration of a lawsuit filed by 13 workers at Alexandria Container and Cargo Handling Co (ALCN) demanding the dissolution of their union committee. The court adjourned the hearing to allow the defendant (the union committee) to bring the documents requested by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) lawyer on behalf of the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit, which will be heard on November 10th, was filed after the General Syndicate of Maritime Transport unilaterally doubled the subscription fees required from workers, in violation of Law No. 213 of 2017 and without referring to the general assembly (the company’s staff who are members of the syndicate) or their union committee. The law stipulates that the general assembly – as the supreme authority – shall approve any increase in subscription fees.

The plaintiffs spotted other irregularities committed by the existing union committee, including not calling the ordinary general assembly on occasions stipulated by law (at least once a year) since 2022. This undermines the general assembly’s role in overseeing the union committee by following up on its final account, annual budget, and the financial control reports issued by the Central Auditing Organization, in violation of Article 30 of the Trade Unions Law.

The workers asked the syndicate council to remove the irregularities within 15 days as required by law, but the union committee did not respond and unheeded the law. This entrenched the syndicate’s injustice towards the rights of ALCN workers and marginalized the union committee itself, which contradicts the principles of union freedom and the philosophy on which the Trade Unions Law is based.

Therefore, the workers’ lawyers requested that the defendants provide true copies of the union committee’s regulations and its budget over the last three years, as well as a copy of the Central Auditing Organization’s reports on the committee’s work over the last three years, and a copy of the decision to increase the subscription fees. The court approved the lawyers’ requests.

These lawsuits were filed by 12 of the company’s workers in solidarity with the case filed by their colleague Yousry Al-Sayed Ibrahim before the same court, registered with No. 640 of 2024 (labour), which was adjourned to November 2nd. The workers base their lawsuit on the law that bans the issuance of decisions regarding subscription fees without referring to the general assembly, in addition to other violations they reported. They argue that the regulations of the General Syndicate of Maritime Transport are not binding on the members of the ALCN union committee, based on the fact that the law considers the syndicates as legal persons independent from other union entities and the union committee being a legal personality may not be incomplete or dependent on the approval of the general syndicate or others, nor should the latter replace the union organization in what the latter believes is better to secure the interests of its members and fight for them.

The demands of ALCN workers are consistent with the principles of union freedoms and the right to organize stated in the constitution, as well as the agreements signed by successive Egyptian governments and ratified by parliament, including the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention set by the International Labor Organization, which is confirmed by the constitution and the Trade Union Organizations and Protection of the Right to Organize Law No. 213 of 2017.