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 insisting that they will camp outside the factory, blocking the company from removing the machinery, until they have received adequate compensation or get their jobs back.
“I have six kids who are all in school, except one that works at General Security,” says Jamil Abou Chakra, 46, who had worked in the factory for 13 years. “We are willing to die or go to prison because we have nothing left.”
The unity of the former factory workers is far from absolute, however, as the company has actually hired a number of them as security guards to prevent the strikers from entering the factory.
Unions bygone
“Compared to [the union movement] before the war, you now have a miserable corpse of what it once was,” says Fawwaz Traboulsi, professor of politics and history at the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University, as well as the author of “A Modern History of Lebanon.”
Traboulsi was an activist in his day, mobilizing teachers and students and supporting the union movement in the 1960s and early 1970s when it was agile, energetic, increasingly powerful and largely independent.
Now, he speaks like a preacher who has lost his flock, obviously capable of passion and energy but no longer motivated to summon either. The unions he once championed are now husks of their former selves, weak, divided and in the thrall of sectarian political masters.
At the end of the 1975 to 1990 Lebanese Civil War, Traboulsi says that almost no one was interested in bolstering the trade union movement. Strong unions would slow reconstruction by demanding wage hikes and politically independent unions would be of no use to Lebanon’s sectarian leaders.
“[Former Prime Minister Rafiq] Hariri wanted docile trade unions, but more important than Hariri were the Baathists, the Syrian intelligence and the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP), as well as labor ministers, who interfered very strongly in the trade unions,” he explains.
First off, a strong union movement is hindered by regulatory infringements on what should be — according to the International Labor Organization (ILO) — inalienable rights.
ILO Convention 87, established in 1948, reads: “Workers and employers, without distinction whatsoever, shall have the right to establish and, subject only to the rules of the organization concerned, to join organizations of their own choosing without previous authorization.”
The Lebanese government has refused to ratify Convention 87 under the pretext that doing so will allow the trade unions to become a direct reflection of the sectarian divisions within the country. But many of those interviewed for this article agree that this is the case despite not ratifying the convention.
“In our mind it is already divided like this,” says Walid Hamdan of the ILO’s Regional Office for Arab States. Refusing to comply with Convention 87 allows the Lebanese government to deny public employees, including teachers, the right to organize into unions as well as to require every new union, strike or protest to be approved by the labor minister. And with much of Lebanon’s large-scale industry destroyed in the war, new unions that were formed after 1991 became smaller and more localized than their pre-war equivalents. The unions then became an extension of the country’s sectarian system. “The period where thousands of people thought that their interests could be served by resorting to the trade unions was a pre-war phenomenon. Now, sects take care of people’s interests,” says Traboulsi.
The unions are now husks of their former selves, weak, divided and in the thrall of sectarian political masters
Politics in Akkar
Political interference is also one of the complaints of the workers at FPI’s factory in Akkar. The company was founded by Fouad Makhzoumi, leader of the fringe National Dialogue Party, which has no seats in parliament. Most of the workers had formerly been supporters of the Future Movement before, they claim, they were either “forced” or “encouraged” to join the National Dialogue Party. The assertion of being forced to switch political parties, however, means little to the ILO’s Hamdan, who sees the whole ordeal as a weakening of resolve on the workers’ behalf, rather than a grievance to be included in the complaints.
“This is where the problem is. From the beginning I shouldn’t align myself with anybody,” says Hamdan. “I’m an independent entity and my only concern is how to best defend the interests of my workers.” After the strike began, the men had hoped to turn to the ruling March 14 coalition for support as the Future movement currently holds sway in the region with a majority of Akkar’s parliamentary seats — that was before August 6, when Makhzoumi held a dinner in honor of Future Movement leader, Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
The FPI workers now find themselves in the difficult position of being without a political patriarch interested in maintaining their support.
Woes of the workplace
The strikers claim that the working conditions in the plant were hazardous, with fiberglass dust constantly in the air and no masks or aspirators provided, causing respiratory problems, eye infections and even cancer.
“The fiberglass, while we are grinding it, makes a cloud inside the factory and makes infections in the eyes,” said FPI union president, Abbas al-Badan, 53, who worked at the factory for 12 years. At FPI’s Egypt factory workers have also accused the company of workplace malpractice, presenting a report in August to the Egyptian Attorney General claiming that the unsafe use of toxic materials in the factory resulted in a worker’s death.
FPI has called all of the Akkar union’s accusations “calumnious.” When contacted by Executive, FPI’s head of communications said the company would not grant interview requests. A written company statement on the matter reads: “The company holds since 2004, the International Organization for Standardization 14001 accreditation for its compliance with the strongest environmental requirements and is subjected to continual audit in this connection twice per year.”
But the workers argue that, in the case of Lebanon, inspectors were bribed and the factory management was given advance warning of inspections, giving them the opportunity to temporarily improve working conditions. Despite the many grievances of FPI’s workers, the strike has resulted in little progress since it began in July, and union experts are pessimistic about its success. The protest’s removed location limits media attention and the organizers have struggled to arrange more visible events in Beirut. And despite their efforts, the workers have not been able to gather in such numbers as to make a strong and un-ignorable stand.
But as the workers sit at the factory’s gate, taking shifts and waiting for a wave of public support they can only hope is on its way, they beg the questions: why are they doing it alone? And, if conditions were as egregious as they say they were for 15 years, why are they only just now bringing up the subject?
Systematic fragmentation and politicization of the trade unions as a whole have weakened them almost to ineptitude
State of the unions
The FPI union in Akkar is just one example of how systematic fragmentation and politicization of the trade unions as a whole have weakened them almost to ineptitude. The natural place for the Akkar protestors to look for support would be up the ladder of the union system to the confederation. Lebanon’s General Labor Confederation (GLC) is the parent organization of all of Lebanon’s 52 trade unions, but the oddly unfinished lobby in the confederation’s building is not the only thing giving the organization a derelict air. The GLC suffers from structural defects that make it ill-equipped to help small causes like the strike in Akkar. The confederation, for example, does not require its member unions and syndicates to pay dues. Some of the wealthier sub-organizations do contribute, but Ghassan Ghosn, president of the GLC, says that it is impossible for the smaller organizations to do so, as they struggle to fund even their own operations.
The GLC is largely funded by the government and is included in the Ministry of Finance’s budget, as is the case in most countries.
“When the union movement depends solely on government funding, that can be used as leverage to pressure them here and there,” says ILO’s Hamdan. “If [they] don’t have other sources of funding then [they] lose [their] independence.”
Ghosn says even with government money, the GLC’s funding is inadequate. The GLC did provide the Future Pipe union with a lawyer to help in their efforts, but funding for further legal counsel or efforts to generate awareness through paid media are nowhere to be found.
Ghosn claims, however, that further funding is unnecessary in the case of the FPI workers. “Their problem is not a question of money. Publicity does not need money. The newspaper and other media is free,” he said. “Even if they have a lot of money they will not be on the level of Makhzoumi.”
Outside of individual union activities, the GLC also lobbies on behalf of all workers in Lebanon. In March, Ghosn and representatives from the GLC met with the Minister of Labor in order to present grievances regarding just taxation, social security benefits, and the provision of electricity and water.
It is these general demands that most frustrate Hamdan: “If I were in the leadership of the [confederation] one of my major priorities would be to have the right of all workers to associate and organize. They make only shy demands.”
The yearly meeting between the GLC and the Ministry of Labor yielded little results and meetings continued throughout the summer. A general strike was planned for June but Ghosn called it off in when promised a ministerial committee dedicated to GLC issues. He also said the GLC did not want to interfere with the tourism season. After months without progress, Ghosn threatened again in September to call for a general strike if his concerns were not addressed.
This is effectively the only card he has to play, but it has nowhere near the punch it would have had prior to the civil war. No general strike since the war has drawn the thousands of workers they used to. When crowds do form, they usually don sectarian colors and flags — whatever the real reason for the protest. The clashes and street battles between government and opposition supporters in May 2008, after all, began with a labor strike. A general strike might then be perceived as more a threat of civil unrest than a protest.
No general strike since the war has drawn the thousands of workers they used to. When crowds do form, they usually don sectarian colors
Still waiting
Sitting under their tent on a smoldering summer day, the former workers of FPI in Akkar admit that they allowed the union to weaken and almost disappear before their dismissal. After years of letting management pick the union leader, of turning their heads when the factory was kept from working at full capacity on “surprise” inspection days, for accepting the hours, the conditions and the pay they now think was so unfair, they say they feel a shard of remorse and even shame.
At present, it is looking unlikely that the workers of Future Pipe will get what they want, as they have been effectively abandoned to their fate by the country’s union leaders and the Lebanese state.
“Whatever pretext is being used for throwing these people out I think they have the right to decent jobs and the right to discuss their own future,” says the ILO’S Hamdan. “Whenever there is some sort of summary dismissal, whatever pretext, whether economic or technical, it should be negotiated with the workers, which did not happen.” He sighs: “I am very supportive of their demands, but it’s not the commune of Paris.”
