Thirty Years of the Justice System Archive

Today we publish the report “Professional Unions and 18 Years of struggle with Law 100,” which is issued within the series “Thirty Years of the Justice System Archive.” and includes two research papers.

Under the title “Law 100 and Socio-Political Conflict: Causes, Effects, Resistance and Lessons”, the first paper by researcher Hisham Fouad deals with socio-political conflicts as a context for the intervention of state authority in the affairs of professional syndicates, and from a historical perspective before and after Law 100 of 1993. This is because the enactment and application of the law represents one of the most prominent stations of this authoritarian intervention and aggression against what remains of the independence of the unions.

This paper presents a kind of “panorama” of events, causes, attitudes, and repercussions that shape the law from its inception to its repeal in general contexts that allow understanding and interpretation. These contexts are full of power struggles and public figures that are centered and moving around vital points in the relationship of the four trade unions and their professional unionists with the “justice system” in legislation and courts highlighting the diversity of conflict mechanisms and levels, escalation and decline from the courts and the discourse addressed to members of these unions, society and state authorities, to holding seminars, conferences, mobilization and gathering in public spaces outside the headquarters of unions and courts.

The second paper “How the Justice System: Courts, Professional Syndicates and Law 100” by researcher “Zainab Khair” focuses from a legal perspective, legislative texts, and practice in the courts, on the intrusive effects of state authority in the affairs of professional syndicates, with ways to resist these effects judicially, especially the battles of imposing and abolishing guardianship, with the help of texts in Egyptian laws. It provides a further anatomy of the interference of State power in the core affairs of the four professional syndicates under study by employing their monopoly, under successive constitutions, to enact professional syndicate laws.

This paper illustrates the dimensions of Law 100 of 1993 and its amendment by Law 5 of 1995, which opened the door to the expansion of the imposition of guardianship on professional syndicates in an unprecedented manner, based on the impossible conditions emerging with the law and obstructing the completion of the quorum of the election association, as well as those dimensions inherent in the provisions of Law 100, which led to the suspension of the convening of general assemblies and further weakened their effectiveness and ability to address, through the implementation of trade union democracy, the financial and administrative irregularities of a number of council members. These unions were then led to impose guardianship due to the availability of “urgent and imminent danger”, based on legal provisions that also preceded Law 100.

At the end of this introduction, it is necessary to note the importance and added value of the present report because of its timely issuance. This goes beyond the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Law 100 to reflect on its effects and lessons. A reflection on the state of Egyptian professional associations today calls for more than two research papers on a particular previous time. There is a need for comparative studies with the strides made by professional and labor unions and civil society in societies located in our geographical and cultural surroundings, specifically in Sudan and Tunisia, even if this relative progress compared to the Egyptian case is marred by negatives, obstacles, and pitfalls, and according to the fluctuations of the paths of societal political change efforts here and there.