The failure of the government candidate in the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate elections despite generous government financial support against the leftist candidate who heads the editor-in-chief of a blocked website has raised many questions about whether what happened can be considered an indication of a change in professional syndicates that have been excluded from engaging with national issues since the second half of 2013 until now.
The same scene happened before in the Engineers Syndicate last year with the victory of a non-governmental candidate, which prompted some to increase the dose of optimism to consider what happened in the Journalists Syndicate as an indication of the beginning of societal change in light of the state of discontent with high prices and economic turmoil, while others considered that the echo of what happened will not exceed the walls of the Journalists Syndicate, which will continue to be isolated from societal issues, as happened in the Engineers Syndicate after the victory of the non-governmental candidate, because the general approach of the ruling regime does not allow the existence of live hotspots. An actor that gives hope to the public for change.
According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, there are 25 professional unions in addition to some federations such as the Federation of Medical Professions Syndicates and the Federation of Technical Professions Syndicates, in contrast to the 29 general trade unions supervised by the Minister of Manpower.
8 million members of professional unions
The number of members of professional syndicates by the end of 2021 is about 8 million and 38 thousand members, and the largest syndicates were the Applied Syndicate with about one million and 968 thousand members, by 24.5% of the total, and the Commercial Syndicate by about one million and 806 thousand members, by 22.5%, and the Educational Professions Syndicate had one million and 96 thousand members, engineering professions 796 thousand members, agricultural professions 543 thousand members, and lawyers 376 thousand members, and on the other hand, the number of members of the smallest syndicate - the Syndicate of Movement Rehabilitation and Stadium Injuries. 1269 members, the Media Syndicate 1471 members, the representative professions 3550 members, memorizers of the Holy Quran 8117 members, and journalists 11 thousand and 527 members.
In terms of origin, there are 7 syndicates that precede the army movement, where the Bar Association was established in 1912, journalists in 1941, engineers in 1946, syndicates of human doctors, dentists, pharmacists and veterinarians in 1949, then the establishment of the Agricultural Syndicate in 1954, teachers, filmmakers, acting professions and musical professions in 1955 and commercial professionals in 1964.
During the era of President Mubarak, professional syndicates were besieged by the issuance of Law 100 of 1993, which the authorities called the Law on Guarantees of the Democracy of Professional Trade Union Organizations, which required the validity of the election of the president and members of the general or subsidiary syndicate council to vote at least half of the members of the general assembly whose names are registered in the syndicate's lists.
Trade Union, which has not met since 1993
This condition – the vote of half of the members of the General Assembly – was impossible to achieve with the million-strong unions such as appliers, commercialists and teachers, whether in terms of attending this number, especially with the presence of many members to work abroad, or because of the lack of the appropriate place to accommodate this huge number or the human capabilities to manage the electoral process with these numbers.
This law caused the disruption of holding general assemblies in most unions, so that it caused the general assembly of the Commercial Syndicate not to be held since then until now, despite its amendment in 1995, and then declaring it unconstitutional on the second of January 2011, and the state imposed custody on the Engineers Syndicate in 1994, and therefore its general assemblies were not held from 1995 to 2011.
Despite this, some syndicates have interacted with the Palestinian cause, such as the Syndicate of Doctors, Scientists and Journalists, and some have interacted with local public issues such as the syndicates of doctors, veterinarians, journalists and others in the form of seminars and conferences.
The period after the January 25 revolution witnessed intense activity in the unions in line with the social movement that followed the revolution, and many unions whose elections were disrupted for years began to prepare for the elections, and the Islamic trend obtained influential positions in the unions of engineers, pharmacists, veterinarians and teachers.
President Mohamed Morsi's term and cooperation between unions
Coordination meetings were held between syndicates, such as at the Journalists Syndicate in February 2012, to discuss cooperation in the fields of investment, bank deposits, Takaful funds, members' treatment, housing projects, social clubs, trips and resorts, and the Doctors' Syndicate in May 2012.
The late president met with union heads at the Presidential Palace on July 24, 2012, where he stated that professional unions are the backbone of society, and said that he was one of these professionals.
This was followed by a meeting between the bodies of the offices of professional associations in July at Dar El Alamein, to discuss joint activities between professional associations in the fields of housing, automating unions, training and raising professional competence, and to discuss how to contribute to the implementation of the president's program in the fields of fuel, waste and traffic. Prime Minister Hisham Qandil also met with the heads of professional unions at the Council of Ministers in August 2012, listening to their problems and calling on them to develop union resources instead of relying on government support.
Representatives of professional syndicates also met with the Engineers Syndicate in October 2012 to discuss how syndicates can contribute to solving national problems, and the syndicate presented its vision of its role in solving the housing problem as an engineering house of expertise, and offered its engineering advisory services for housing projects carried out by other syndicates.
Arrests and seizure of trade unionists' funds
But the matter is completely different since the army took power in mid-2013 and the position of civil society entities, where several measures were taken to get rid of the unions councils dominated by the Islamic current, such as engineers, doctors, scientists, teachers, pharmacists, veterinarians and dentistry, with the arrest of a number of senior trade unionists, some of whom are still behind bars until now, and the seizure of the funds of a number of trade unionists that are still ongoing, and the inclusion of some of them to the list of terrorists, including the travel ban and intransigence during their dealings with Government agencies, even if they just obtain birth certificate papers for children from the civil registry or renew a private car license.
The message of the regime reached the unions, so they turned on themselves and focused their activities on traditional services for members such as pensions, emergency benefits, death, treatment, trips, resorts, Hajj and Umrah, especially with the financial deficit in many unions, which does not enable them to regularly pay pensions for years, due to the lack of resources, as happened in the syndicate of merchants, despite the small value of the pension.
In the Journalists Syndicate, the fall of some stone pieces from the façade of the building was exploited to justify the existence of reforms under which any cultural activities or seminars were banned for a period of 4 years, and the rental of the syndicate's halls to the activities of civil society entities was prohibited, as was the case under Mubarak.
The successive news contributed to delivering meaningful messages to members of union councils, as happened with the office of consulting engineer Mamdouh Hamza by preventing government agencies from dealing with him for his opposition positions, and the artist Adel Imam was subjected to not showing his Ramadan series because of his criticism of political matters, and the imprisonment of some artists because of their positions that did not appeal to the authorities, such as Shadi Hussein and Ahmed Malik.
The opposition artist is a traitor to the homeland
What happened to the artist Iman Al-Bahr Darwish, the former head of the Musicians Syndicate, and what happened before the Acting Professions Syndicate of dropping the membership of both the artist Omar Waked and the artist Khaled Abu Al-Naga because of their criticism of the political situation in the country, until the Actors Syndicate said about them that the Syndicate will not accept the presence of any member who is a traitor to his homeland among its members.
In light of the United Company for Artistic Production acquiring the largest share of the production of series and films, job opportunities in the artistic field became dependent on the extent of satisfaction with the artist, which prompted the majority to participate in dramas that glorify the ruling regime, so that they can afford living expenses.
This is how the country is living nearly 10 years of excluding the role of professional associations, and limiting them to the framework of the social services they provide to their members, which does not allow them to engage in public affairs, so no one has heard about the position of the Engineers Syndicate in the New Administrative Capital, for example, and even when members of the Bar Association recently protested against being obliged to register with the electronic invoice for taxes last December, their protest was by prior agreement with the security authorities.
Hence, it can be said that it is difficult for professional unions to emerge from this state of latency, as this is related to the general state of society, the security blockade of civil society, the dangers to which those who criticized the ruling regime were exposed, and the absence of any human rights guarantees for them or even the media. In addition, there are provisions within the laws of many professional syndicates that guarantee the competent minister of the syndicate to withdraw confidence from the president and the syndicate council, in response to a request from a limited number of members that are easy to manage, and to form a committee to manage the work of the syndicate until new elections take place, as happened in the Engineers Syndicate in December 2013.