A new labor union organizations law was issued last December under Law No. 213/2017 (the “Law”) replacing previous labor union organizations law No. 35/1976. The Law explicitly provides for the prohibition of establishing labor unions based on religious or political grounds or incorporating discriminative rules in the articles of association of such organizations.

In general, the Law maintains the three levels of labor organizations with the same hierarchal competencies; on the top of the hierarchy lies the unions federation, then the general labor unions comes and finally is the union committees inside the establishments.

In a significant change, the Law tightened the conditions of establishing a labor organization through requiring a higher number of workers to join the labor organization as members according to the following:

(a) A Union Committee inside a company/establishment can only be formed with a minimum of 150 workers/members, whereas the previous law required only 50 worker/members.

(b) A General Labor Union can only be established with a number of not less than 15 union committees representing - at least- 20,000 workers/members, while the canceled law did not require such a condition.

(c) A Labor Union Federation can be established with a number of not less than 10 General Labor Unions representing - at least - 200,000 workers/members.

The executive regulation of the Law shall ascertain the conditions and procedures required for existing Labor Organizations to comply with the Law. Such compliance shall take place within 60 days (maximum) from the date of issuing the executive regulation.

Existing Labor Organizations which will not be able to satisfy the above membership threshold will be dissolved.

Notwithstanding the above restriction concerning the formation of a Labor Organizations, the Law introduces a number of provisions which can be seen as steps forward towards the liberalization of Labor Organizations in Egypt. Among these provisions the following:

Posted in News on Feb 07, 2018