The specter of Solidarity

For the past four months, former workers have been staging a sit- in at the gates of the Future Pipe Industries (FPI) factory in Akkar, Lebanon’s underdeveloped northernmost region. FPI, a global manufacturer of fiberglass pipes announced in July that it would be closing the Akkar plant, citing adverse operating conditions. But many of the factory’s 200 contracted workers, and up to 140 daily workers, are crying foul. They say that some of the employees, who are unionized, were so skilled that they were sent to some of FPI’s 10 other factories around the world to train others and that the company had just supplied the Akkar plant with new machines worth millions, suggesting that the factory was not losing money. The workers also claim to have been dismissed without proper consultation or compensation. The more active members of the FPI union, having been left in a jobless limbo, are