Egyptalum workers protest blocking of dividend

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Workers for Egyptalum, numbering 5,800, organised a sit-in protesting the refusal to distribute the labourers’ share of the annual profits.

A member of the trade union commission of Egyptalum said that the workers escalated the protest because the Metallurgical Industries Holding, the mother company of Egyptalum, broke its promise to disperse five months’ salary because of the losses suffered by the company this year.

In the previous year, Egyptalum achieved losses for the first time in its history with a total loss of EGP 1.67 billion. “The losses resulted from the increased cost of electricity and the decreased international price of aluminum, not from the efficiency of labour,” said MP Rehab al-Ghoul who is participating in the negotiations between the labourers and the administration. Over the past 10 years, Egyptalum achieved mounting profits every year before the regression, which began after the peak in 2017/2018 when the company achieved gains estimated to be EGP 2.7 billion.

As one of the public business sector’s companies, workers of Egyptalum, owned by Metallurgical Industries Holding, get a 12-month-salary reward every November and another 12-month-salary reward every December, as the labourers’ share of the profits.