Neoliberal Policies and the Egyptian Trade Union Movement: Politics of Containment and the Limits of Resistance

Abstract

Following to the Nasserite rule, Sadat and Mubarak were both prone to employ greater economic liberalization. Indeed, the year 1991 was the turning point of the liberalization policies for Egypt. In May 1991, Egypt signed the new structural adjustment program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has engaged Egypt with a series of neoliberal measures, in par-ticular the sale of state-owned enterprises (Pratt 2001, p. 115). Already, the enactment of the law 203 in 1991 favored privatization targeting 314 public companies as eligible for privatization (Beinin 2011a, p. 186). Moreover, with the arrival of the technocratic government of Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, Egypt witnessed a radical acceleration of the ongoing economic lib-eralization since the mid-1990s. Having adopted a clear neoliberal agenda, the Nazif government (2004–11) announced plans to privatize most of the public companies. In 2005–6, the government sold therefore 59 public companies for $2.6 billion (Rutherford 2008, p. 223), and, as a result, the GDP grew at an average annual rate of over 6 percent until about 2008 (Roll 2013, p. 7). However, this growth was accompanied with the formation of an oligarchy and rising social inequality. Moreover, the privatization process was conducted with a total lack of transparency (El-Naggar 2009, p. 45). This has resulted, at least partially, in a remarkable concentration of capital in the private sector. Thanks to a widespread corruption in the sale of public enterprises, a small number of entrepreneurs succeeded in establishing huge commercial empires (Roll 2013, pp. 7–8).