23,000 Egypt workers at factory declare strike
CAIRO (AP) — About 23,000 textile workers in a northern Egyptian town are on strike, demanding higher wages
They say the manager reneged on his promise to award them a bonus of a month and a half salary.
Saturday's strike brought production at the state-owned Misr Spinning and Weaving company to a halt.
An activist in the town of Mahalla al-Kobra, Mosaab Shahrour, said Sunday that several hundred employees are staging a sit-in inside the company.
Mahalla al-Kobra, a gritty industrial town, was the scene of numerous labor strikes and riots in 2008 over hardships caused by high food prices. Demonstrators destroyed posters of then-President Hosni Mubarak and clashed with security troops.
That strike prompted calls by opposition groups to turn the labor unrest into a wider political protest against the government.
