Gharbiya garment workers pause strike after partial August wage payments
Garment workers at the Samanoud Textile and Terry Cloth Company ended a weeklong strike on Thursday after management disbursed partial wage payments, but unionists warned that factory-wide walkouts will resume next month if back pay is not delivered in full.
The women workers, based in the Nile Delta governorate of Gharbiya, downed tools on Sept. 17 to protest management’s failure to disburse their full wages for August.
Two workers told Al Manassa that the strikers agreed to resume production after the company distributed 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($23) of their August salaries. Management pledged to disburse the remaining 1,000 pounds on Monday and promised to regularize wage disbursements during the first week of every month moving forward.
According to the two workers, a delegation from the state-affiliated Arab Investment Bank—the majority owner of Samanoud—met the striking women on Wednesday alongside company board chairman Saad El-Din Abd Rabbo.
Company and bank officials pledged to resolve recurring payroll delays and claimed capital would soon be injected into the mill for modernization.
Workers, however, had rejected those assurances as hollow. The two employees said the shop floor views the promises as mere “painkillers” intended to defuse unrest. The workforce has handed management an ultimatum until Oct. 10: disburse September salaries in full, or face an expanded strike spanning every production department in the factory.
Since mid-2025, Samanoud executives have enforced a fragmented payment scheme, paying the prior month’s wages in three separate tranches roughly a week apart.
Employees previously told Al Manassa that carving monthly salaries into fractions crippled their ability to meet household expenses. Workers added that management repeatedly breached its own payment calendar over recent months, leaving families stranded without predictable income.
On Tuesday, a coalition of political parties, independent trade unions, and human rights organizations issued a joint declaration standing in solidarity with the women of Samanoud.
Signatories charged that staggering wages across weekly installments, withholding pay, failing to meet the legal minimum wage, and pocketing social insurance deductions without remitting them to state funds constitute flagrant violations of fundamental labor rights.
The coalition demanded an immediate release of all wage arrears on fixed, predictable schedules, the comprehensive implementation of the statutory minimum wage with retroactive compensation, the payout of frozen periodic allowances, and the immediate settlement of all overdue financial entitlements.
Signatories further demanded that management remit all social insurance dues docked from workers’ paychecks, clear the associated institutional debt, and immediately cease all disciplinary threats, punitive reprisals, and administrative retaliation against employees exercising their legal right to strike and organize.
The latest walkout caps two years of escalating industrial actions at the mill over chronic wage arrears and the suspension of medical coverage. In July, the workforce struck after being stripped of healthcare benefits—even as insurance deductions were systematically siphoned from their paychecks. Management broke that strike by summarily suspending six female garment workers.
In April, the factory came to a complete standstill during an all-out strike over unpaid March wages and vanished health benefits. Striking workers rejected a concessionary management offer to pay 50% of their back wages, holding out for their complete earnings, an end to systemic payment delays, and the permanent abolition of the piecemeal installment system.
Earlier this year, on March 11, garment-division women launched protests and partial stoppages demanding an end to systemic payroll abuse. The action gathered momentum across the complex, culminating in an all-out strike that concluded on March 18 when management paid February wages in full and promised regular wage calendars alongside restored healthcare. Neither pledge was honored.
The workforce has endured systematic labor abuses over recent years. In April 2025, company officials sparked outrage by restricting the national minimum wage strictly to administrative personnel and shopfloor supervisors.
Following worker backlash, management extended the rate across the factory, though workers noted at the time that the company violated the law by counting production incentives and overtime hours toward the minimum wage baseline.
The current standoff follows a historic 35-day strike launched on Aug. 18, 2024, in which Samanoud workers demanded the enforcement of Egypt’s legal minimum wage. The workforce aborted that mobilization under direct threats of mass firings and police imprisonment.
That same month, security forces arrested 10 workers, including labor leader Hesham El-Banna. Prosecutors brought state security charges against them, alleging “incitement to strike, unlawful assembly, and attempting to overthrow the ruling regime.” While authorities later released the detainees, management retaliated against El-Banna with summary dismissal.