Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions

The mainstream media continues to tell us their fairy tale version of the Egyptian revolution: the Egyptian people won a Facebook revolution that lasted just eighteen days. As a result of massive street protests, the military junta ousted Mubarak, suspended the old constitution, and dissolved parliament and is negotiating with the “opposition” to write a new constitution leading to “democratic” elections in six months time. According to the US press, this consists of opposition leaders like expatriate Mohamed Elbaradei, members of the youth movement, and  “bloggers,” like Google executive Wael Ghonim. The foreign press, on the other hand, tends to be more accurate in reporting that the true balance of power rests with the Egyptian independent trade union movement, consisting of more than thirty independent unions (including those representing workers in Egypt’s two most important sources of foreign currency: the Suez Canal and the tourism industry). The omission of this powerful movement from US mainstream coverage is quite significant, given that a general strike (which was clearly imminent in the days prior to Mubarak’s resignation) has the potential to shut down the entire Egyptian economy and is much more difficult to derail than street protests (you can’t really force people to work by shooting them).

The Refusal of the US Media to Cover Labor Issues

On reflection, I guess the media distortions around the Egyptian revolution are no surprise, given the typically poor coverage strikes and union issues receive in the US media. Presumably the omission of the role played by strikes and labor unrest in the massive street protests in Europe, as well as Egypt and China, is part and parcel of a sophisticated, decades-old public relations strategy (promoted by Wall Street, the corporate media and various left gatekeeping foundations receiving funding from US intelligence). See “A Short History of Left Gatekeeping Foundations” http://blogs.alternet.org/refugee/2010/07/21/a-short-history-of-left-gatekeeper-foundations/

The Taboo Against “Workers” and “Working Class”

As the late Alex Carey describes in Taking the Risk Out of Democracy (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25/006.html), the original purpose of “pubic relations” – a psychologically sophisticated form of propaganda pioneered by Edward Bernays (the “father” of public relations) –  was to discredit working class culture, union organizing and strikes and simultaneously undermine strong pro-worker sentiment among the American public.

As Professor Joel Beinin reminds us in his analysis of the Egyptian labor movement (http://humanexperience.stanford.edu/beininegypt), the terms “worker” and “working class” aren’t taboo in Egypt as they are in the US, where even pink collar office workers earning minimum wage consider themselves “middle class.” In the US, there has been a concerted effort to promote the myth (not only in the news, but in movies, TV programming and popular magazines) that class differences have been abolished. By tricking working class Americans (80% of us) into believing we are really “middle class,” the power elite also manipulates us into identifying with our employers, rather than fellow workers.

Wall Street and Obama are Running Scared

With the recent massive pro-union protests in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, clearly US workers are waking up to the reality that their corporate employers – who are subjecting them to mass lay-offs, wages freezes and benefit cuts, as well as expropriating their pension funds, while simultaneously paying their corporate bosses millions and billions of dollars in CEO bonuses – are essentially ripping them off. Despite unprecedented corporate profits and rising stock prices, conditions continue to get worse for workers – as they struggle to deal with skyrocketing food and energy costs, in the face of yet more lay-offs, wage freezes and benefit cuts and foreclosures.

Yet instead of trying to address the genuine pain of the American working class, Wall Street, the Obama administration and the mainstream media collude to conceal the vital role unions and strike action are playing in producing genuine political and economic reform in other countries. Apparently the risk is too high that US workers will try to copy their Egyptian brothers, by banding together with fellow workers to exercise real power in the face of relentless corporate attacks.

---