organization:international labor organization

No Jobs and Bad Jobs

Article très intéressant sur le marché du travail en Egypte et le chômage des jeunes. Le rôle de l’Etat, les secteurs porteurs, l’économie parallèle et les assurances y sont abordés. Tout comme des solutions pour faire évoluer la situation et des perspectives.

Cet article me fait penser aux parcours de plusieurs personnages du livre « L’arche de Noé » de Khaled Al Khamissi (chronique à lire prochainement dans Le Monde diplomatique).

Youth employment issues pose a threat to Egypt’s democratic transition. Persistent high unemployment rates among youth, the increasing deterioration of the quality of jobs available with no social protection and the growth in employment informality are central policy challenges in Egypt.
(...)
Research has repeatedly shown that unemployment in Egypt is primarily a problem of youth insertion to labor market. (...) However, unemployment is not the only problem in Egypt’s labor market. There are two main issues that unemployment figures fail to capture. The first is what is termed by the World Bank as “joblessness.” (...) (and) the quality of jobs available for youth.
(...)
Jobs that offer financial stability, employment security and social protection are rare in Egypt.
(...)
Job creation is central to any meaningful discussion of youth employment issues. While the government can no longer be the main employer of youth in Egypt, it is the role of the government to enable an environment in which the private sector can develop to its full potential and play a role in generating employment and decent jobs. (...)
The fact that most young people are working in the informal economy and not contributing to pension schemes urges policy interventions in this area.
(...)
There is also a growing interest worldwide in micro-insurance schemes that are provided by cooperatives, unions, non-governmental organizations, self-help groups, and the private sector.
(...)
Finally, it is important for youth to have a voice in the process of addressing their employment issues. Engagement with youth, particularly those working within the informal economy, is central to a youth-focused policy framework for employment. Fragmentation and limited avenues for advocacy has meant that youth are absent from the policy process. Violence and angry demonstrations have been the only means for them to be heard.

http://www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairoreview/pages/articleDetails.aspx?aid=280

Spinneys Union Leader Assaulted
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/spinneys-union-leader-assaulted

Moukheiber Habshi, a member of the founding committee of the Spinneys-Lebanon workers union, was assaulted Monday night by attackers who told him to leave the union or “we’ll break your bones,” Habshi said.

The attack was the latest in a series of incidents aimed at sabotaging union activity in the retail giant, which operates seven large supermarkets around Lebanon.

The Spinneys union applied for registration with the Ministry of Labor at the end of July and is planning to hold elections soon. Its recent establishment was considered a victory for labor rights activists against the management of Spinneys-Lebanon whose exploitative practices were documented by the International Labor Organization.

Chez nos amis du Akhbar libanais, ils osent l’illustration illustrative :
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/gaping-holes-education-and-labor-market-lebanon

L’image n’a l’air de rien, comme ça :
http://english.al-akhbar.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/5cols/leading_images/Economy_Chakrani_pic_1.jpg

Mais admire-moi cette belle légende :

The educated elite is looking abroad in search of work opportunities.

The Political Economy of the Egyptian Uprising | Stephen Maher (Monthly Review)
►http://monthlyreview.org/2011/11/01/the-political-economy-of-the-egyptian-uprising

Not long after Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Hosni Mubarak would resign his post as President, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Egypt to congratulate the Egyptian people on a job well done. The revolutionaries had accomplished their goal, she said. Everyone could go home and feel proud of their historic achievement and leave the cleaning up to the responsible adults—the United States and the closely allied Egyptian military, which has ruled Egypt since 1952. To prove that there were no hard feelings against the Egyptians for overthrowing one of the closest and most important U.S. allies in the Arab world, the IMF, World Bank, the G8, and the United States itself—the very entities responsible for supporting Mubarak’s thirty-year rule and imposing draconian neoliberal programs on Egypt—have extended as much as $15 billion in aid and credit to Egypt and Tunisia to assist in their transitions to democracy. This generosity begs the question: why are Western governments, and the international financial institutions (IFIs) that are closely linked to them, falling over one another to show their generosity to the revolutionaries and to display their support for progress in the Middle East? Source: Monthly (...)

À lire absolument: The Political Economy of the Egyptian Uprising -Monthly Review
►http://monthlyreview.org/2011/11/01/the-political-economy-of-the-egyptian-uprising

There was considerable economic growth in Egypt under Mubarak. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita rose about fourfold between 1981 and 2006 (in purchasing power parity terms, which is a method of comparing economic activity among countries by keeping the current currency exchange rates among the countries constant). However, this growth was accompanied by rising inequality that “reached levels not before seen in Egypt’s modern history” by the time of Mubarak’s resignation.2 Despite increases in production and wealth, real wages did not rise in tandem, and in many cases actually declined. Egypt’s minimum wage, for instance, has remained unchanged for twenty-six years in the face of increased productivity and significant inflation, particularly in the price of wage goods. Most workers work long hours (according to the ILO, the average Egyptian works forty-eight hours per week) and earn a wage that will not pay for basic necessities. It is not uncommon for employers to simply not pay their employees at all. In short, the neoliberal programs served to consolidate the power of Egypt’s ruling class and concentrate the country’s vast new wealth in the hands of the richest, who gained an increasing portion of a rapidly growing pie while the lower classes saw their share decline (see Charts 1 and 2 for details).

Lebanon and the Arab Revolts: A New Social Contract? | Al Akhbar English
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/lebanon-and-arab-revolts-new-social-contract

The situation in Syria may also pose difficulties for the Lebanese economy. The round table’s assessment of Lebanon’s woes during the Arab Spring focuses on its relationship with its neighbor: “The effects of the winds blowing from Syria seem to be the biggest concerning the historical connection between the two countries.”

The report suggests that “a Syria under sanction would have a negative impact” in Lebanon. Meanwhile, “American policies are not clear now and no one can guess what the next phase might bring… the fact that banking systems are exposed, and especially Lebanese banks, should not be overlooked.”

Why Mubarak is Out
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/516/why-mubarak-is-out

Mubarak is already out of power. The new cabinet is composed of chiefs of Intelligence, Air Force and the prison authority, as well as one International Labor Organization official. This group embodies a hard-core “stability coalition” that will work to bring together the interests of new military, national capital and labor, all the while reassuring the United States. Yes, this is a reshuffling of the cabinet, but one which reflects a very significant change in political direction. But none of it will count as a democratic transition until the vast new coalition of local social movements and internationalist Egyptians break into this circle and insist on setting the terms and agenda for transition.

I wonder how this Fulbright Post-Doctoral scholar living in California managed to detail in full the situation in Egypt without even once mentioning the influence of the United States and Israel into the upheaval mix. Vraiment, chapeau bas.

Le site Jadaliyya publie un très intéressant article d’un certain Paul Amar. Il s’agit, essentiellement, d’un panorama des forces en présence en Égypte. Si vous ne devez lire qu’un article aujourd’hui, celui-là me semble un bon candidat...

Why Mubarak is Out
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/516/why-mubarak-is-out-

Many international media commentators – and some academic and political analysts – are having a hard time understanding the complexity of forces driving and responding to these momentous events. This confusion is driven by the binary “good guys versus bad guys” lenses most use to view this uprising. Such perspectives obscure more than they illuminate. There are three prominent binary models out there and each one carries its own baggage:  (1) People versus Dictatorship: This perspective leads to liberal naïveté and confusion about the active role of military and elites in this uprising. (2) Seculars versus Islamists: This model leads to a 1980s-style call for “stability” and Islamophobic fears about the containment of the supposedly extremist “Arab street.” Or, (3) Old Guard versus Frustrated Youth: This lens imposes a 1960s-style romance on the protests but cannot begin to explain the structural and institutional dynamics driving the uprising, nor account for the key roles played by many 70-year-old Nasser-era figures.

To map out a more comprehensive view, it may be helpful to identify the moving parts within the military and police institutions of the security state and how clashes within and between these coercive institutions relate to shifting class hierarchies and capital formations. I will also weigh these factors in relation to the breadth of new non-religious social movements and the internationalist or humanitarian identity of certain figures emerging at the center of the new opposition coalition.

#Égypte