46 Facts About Kamal Abbas

Kamal Abbas is General Coordinator of the Center for Trade Unions and Workers Services, an activist group for independent unions in Egypt.

Kamal Abbas's approach emphasizes peaceful strikes and rallies accompanied by demands for better wages and working conditions, as well as more regular elections for union officials, and an independent union system.

Kamal Abbas began his work by organizing a strike at a steel plant in Helwan, Egypt in 1989, for which he was arrested, tortured, and fired.

In 2007, Kamal Abbas was charged with defamation and sentenced to one year of prison.

Kamal Abbas' work gained momentum and attention during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, where he helped mobilize workers in the nationwide movement for civil rights and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's regime.

Kamal Abbas began working in a steel mill in 1975 at the age of 20.

Kamal Abbas was arrested four times in the subsequent months, including 45 days of detention in which he was tortured.

Several months later in 1990, Kamal Abbas co-founded CTUWS in Helwan to support workers and address the lack of independent unions in the private sector.

Kamal Abbas was guided by the advice of Yusuf Darwish, a long-time communist and labor lawyer, with whom Abbas had previously led the People's Socialist Party.

Kamal Abbas had studied world labor movements, looking up to the power of unions in Europe and the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s.

Kamal Abbas changed his ideological focus from his early ties to Marxist politics, instead focusing CTUWS on practical reform.

In 1998 Kamal Abbas commented on the July strikes at the Egypt-Helwan Textiles Factory and the Nasr Pharmaceutical plant.

Kamal Abbas saw the incidents as a test of the future of privatisation.

Kamal Abbas said that his General Union for Mineral, Electrical, and Engineering Industries at first refused to grant him status as a labor representative.

In 2001 Kamal Abbas commented on the increasing privatisation of employment and the role of professional committees.

Kamal Abbas criticized exclusions in the bill which left out government administration, domestic work, workers' families, short-term workers, principal management, and self-employed workers, and "pure" agricultural work when done by women and minors.

In 2005 Kamal Abbas was critical of how workers' rights were being addressed in the political dialogue.

In 2005 Kamal Abbas criticized the negotiations in the Esco workers' protest.

Kamal Abbas noted that clause 69 of the labor contract, which stipulated workers could be fired if they fail to perform "essential duties", was broad enough to permit random firings.

Kamal Abbas criticized requirements that protests be approved by the General Federation of Trade Unions.

In June 2005 Kamal Abbas commented on legal issues dealing with the Al-Amrya Weaving and Textile Company.

In July 2005 Kamal Abbas was attacked by plain-clothes Egyptian security forces while demonstrating against human rights abuses by the Mubarak regime.

In 2005 Kamal Abbas criticized the Muslim Brotherhood for being two-faced in their approach to civil rights.

In November 2006 Kamal Abbas dismissed the significance of General Federation of Trade Unions elections, arguing that public sector industrial workers overseen by the GFTU were increasingly few.

Kamal Abbas envisioned a charismatic opposition leader who could rise up amidst the tension, but he did not believe such an individual would be part of the labor movement.

In September 2007 Kamal Abbas and another writer were convicted of defamation and public abuse after writer Mohamed Helmy published an article on corruption at the 15th of May Youth Center, where Kamal Abbas was a member of the board.

Ibrahim filed three petitions against Kamal Abbas and claimed that the magazine article "publicly defamed him as a state-appointed civil servant".

Kamal Abbas based his case on Article 188 of the Egyptian code of law, which penalizes false reporting.

International labor and human rights groups came out in support of Kamal Abbas and condemned the court decision.

In 2010 the Egyptian Minister of Planning created a committee regarding minimum wage, which Kamal Abbas criticized for not acting.

Kamal Abbas supported working with the new committee's goals, which included a minimum annual salary increase of seven per cent.

Kamal Abbas criticized the labour complaints committee for not meeting regularly.

In 2010 Kamal Abbas criticized proposals to postpone trade union elections.

In May 2010 Kamal Abbas criticized the forced end of a protest in Cairo by workers from Amonsito, the Egyptian Telephone Company and el-Nubaria Agricultural Engineering, who had been protesting for several months.

Kamal Abbas had said he would submit a complaint to the International Labour Organization about the incident.

Kamal Abbas criticized Megawer's affiliation with the National Democratic Party, suggesting that the ETUF should not be determining eligibility for parliamentary elections.

In February 2011 Kamal Abbas criticized the elections in federation syndicates for being corrupt with fraud.

Kamal Abbas said, "There are 116 verdicts of administrative court annulling the last union elections and we believe members of the federation were involved in acts of violence against the protesters in Tahrir".

Kamal Abbas recommended creating independent syndicates, saying, "We will do as our grandfathers did before 1952 when the first unions were created in Egypt".

In May 2011 Kamal Abbas celebrated International Workers' Day, the international socialist commemoration of workers' rights reform begun in the United States.

Kamal Abbas deemed that year's celebrations "historic" for marking a break from the ETUF.

Kamal Abbas praised the then newly formed Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions.

In June 2011, Kamal Abbas was co-filer of a lawsuit calling for the dissolution of the state-controlled ETUF.

Kamal Abbas interrupted the ETUF's Ismail Fahmy during his speech at the International Labour Organization June 2011 conference.

In March 2011, Kamal Abbas participated in a labour panel discussing the future of trade unions following the fall of Mubarak's regime.

On 29 February 2012, the CTUWS reported that Kamal Abbas had been sentenced in absentia to six months in prison for "insulting" a public official.