“On the third and final day of our strike, we would like to reiterate that the motives of the strike are not only to protest against low wages and demand fair wages that are in line with the current economic difficulties but also to protest against the discrimination that the institution deliberately commits against us,” read a statement issued by the staff in Cairo on Wednesday.
This is the second strike by the British public broadcaster’s Cairo office in as many months, coming on the heels of a one-day strike on 14 June after a year of failed negotiations with management.
In a press conference held outside the BBC's Cairo office on Wednesday, the head of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate Khaled El-Balshy announced that he would meet representatives from BBC management in London next Thursday.
El-Balshy also revealed that the BBC representatives had tried to exclude the syndicate from the talks, but eventually accepted their participation.
In an emailed reply to Ahram Online, a BBC spokesperson said: “We recognise that the economic situation in Egypt is having a significant impact on our staff and we are increasing salaries by 27 percent between March and July this year to mitigate the levels of high inflation in the country."
“We are disappointed staff have taken strike action and continue to engage with them to find a resolution whilst acting within our market pay policy which is applied consistently across the BBC, globally. BBC News Arabic continues to serve audiences with news and information,” the spokesperson added.
On Wednesday, El-Balshy said "This is a manipulation of numbers; we have an Egyptian labour law that already mandates an annual increase of seven percent under normal circumstances, and then they added to it by combining two 10 percent increases that were received over two years,”
He pointed out that these increases were calculated at current wage rates, and "are half the value of their actual salaries."
El-Balshy added that the BBC's Cairo office staff have not received the same treatment as their counterparts in Turkey or Lebanon, who were granted raises of over 100 percent in the past two years.
He also stated that the Cairo staff are ready to escalate their strike if their demands are not met within two weeks.
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