My name is Ibrahim Mustafa Afifi.
I'm a crane driver.
That's right Mohsen...
We're spending the night here. No one's going home.
[At the Egyptian Iron and Steel Company]
Before we even talk about our money or our benefits,
we as workers are all angry
because the factory has been idle
for over two years,
because of the coal.
It's just not acceptable.
This isn't our problem, it's the holding company's problem, that they haven't provided us with coal.
We've been losing outrageous sums of money for two years now because there's no coal.
Are they trying to privatize?
Like when they deliberately let companies fail and then sold them by the meter?
Sold them as junk?
We want to understand.
Our company is rotten to the core, the sales department is the most corrupt department
in the whole company. It works for the interests of certain clients.
So the product is available but they say we don't have it. They'll only sell to certain clients.
It's all politics - they're all greasing each others palms, with the help of the chairman of the board.
No one gives a damn about us.
We even heard a rumor today that they're accusing us of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood.
We're not Brotherhood.
We're demanding the factory get up and running. 12,000 Egyptian families,
What happens if they're all tossed out onto the street? how can they suddenly do this to them?
They don't think about it, that there's corruption everywhere in the country
and that the company has been rotten for three years now.
Ever since this Chairman was hired the company has been going downhill.
We have no idea what he does exactly, no marketing, no selling, no work.
And it's not our fault. We come in and wait for work and do what we can.
As for him - no development strategies, no putting people to work, no nothing.
So if the company is sold today to private investors, tomorrow Military Production takes over Iron and Steel,
they'll raise the price from 4 or 5,000 to 10,000 and no one will be able to say a word,
just like they did with the national cement company.
Cement used to cost 100 or 200 pounds, today it costs 600.
You can't control the price anymore.
But a country that doesn't produce iron and steel has no backbone, has no central nervous system.
If there's a war or economic sanctions, or, or, or - you have no back.
Then there was the problem of our benefits,
that's what made the workers revolt.
Calling them profits is a misnomer.
They're called production incentives, meaning if i earn 1,500 they pay me 1,000
and put aside 500 every month
that they pay out as a lump sum at the end of the year.
That's called a production incentive.
It's not about sharing out company profits.
It's my money, and they've put it aside for me.
And the general trade union federation
agreed in October
that at the end of the year I would be paid16 months of the principal pay.
We were supposed to get paid finally but they're all trying to get out of it.
The holding company is saying there's no money.
The government is saying there's no money.
The management has vanished into thin air,
no one comes in anymore.
"We have not grown tired,
the rights of workers have not been received."
"Film, broadcast, our money won't be lost."
"Here we are, the workers of iron."
"Robber, they're robbers!"
"We're not going!"
"They have to go!"
That's it!