Current Analysis Up with Friction On the first anniversary of the January 25 revolution in Egypt, it is right and meet to shine light upon a figure who is shadowy and obscure in mainstream retrospectives: the striking worker. Chris Toensing • 4 min read
MER Article Striking Back at Egyptian Workers Mainstream narratives of the ongoing 2011 Egyptian revolution center around a “crisis of the state.” Among the elements of the crisis were the utter failure of top-down political reform, as shown in the shamelessly rigged 2010 legislative elections; mounting corruption and repression; emerging opportunities for collective action offered by networking Hesham Sallam • 17 min read
MER Article Tunisian Labor Leaders Reflect Upon Revolt The Tunisian revolution of January 2011 drew upon the participation of nearly every social stratum. Organized labor threw its weight into the struggle early on, in an important sign of the breadth and depth of opposition to the rule of the dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In mid-March, the Sacrame Chris Toensing • 7 min read
MER Article Egyptian Labor Activists Assess Their Achievements On August 3, the AFL-CIO presented its Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award to the workers of Egypt. It was the first time in the award’s 20-year history that the recipient was from an Arab country. In its award resolution, the American labor federation cited the remarkable burst of Egyptian worker act Lauren Geiser • 6 min read
Current Analysis The Green Movement Awaits an Invisible Hand It is the custom of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to devise a name for each Persian new year when it arrives. On Nowruz of the Persian year 1388, which fell in March 2009 Gregorian time, he proclaimed “the year of rectifying consumption patterns.” But Ir Mohammad Maljoo • 11 min read
MER Article No Shelter “Angela” came to Jordan to work as a housekeeper because she is a single mother and needs to save for her children’s schooling. She paid a recruiter in the Philippines 11,000 pesos, about $234, “for the processing of my papers.” An hour before she went to the airport, she says, she signed a contract Rola Abimourched • 13 min read
MER Article Locked In, Locked Out of Work Article VI, Item 2 of the 1993 Oslo accords concluded between Israel and the Palestinians states, “After the entry into force of this Declaration of Principles and the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho area, with the view to promoting economic development in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, au Jennifer Olmsted • 11 min read
MER Article Livelihoods Up in Smoke On the streets of Turkish cities, the cigarette packs being traded and tucked into shirt pockets are adorned with the familiar brand names of Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. The ubiquity of foreign brands is remarkable, for Turkey is the world’s leading producer of Oriental tobacco—the s Ebru Kayaalp • 11 min read
Current Analysis The Precarious Existence of Dubai's Indian Middle Class Dubai, according to the conventional wisdom, is a bust. The International Monetary Fund predicts that economic growth in the United Arab Emirates as a whole will be lower in 2009 than in the last five years; the Dubai government has borrowed billions of dollars from Abu Dhabi to bail out its banks; Neha Vora • 11 min read
MER Article Remittances and Development The Middle East and North Africa have been hit hard by the global recession. Several of the oil-rich Gulf states are in the midst of an economic contraction, with their famed sovereign wealth funds having lost 27 percent of their value in 2008. The Gulf states, along with the European Union, buy mos Sameera Fazili • 6 min read
Current Analysis The Militancy of Mahalla al-Kubra For the second time in less than a year, in the final week of September the 24,000 workers of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra went on strike—and won. As they did the first time, in December 2006, the workers occupied the Nile Delta town’s mammoth textile mill and rebuffed t Joel Beinin • 9 min read
MER Article Iraqi Unions vs. Big Oil On February 26, 2007, the Iraqi cabinet passed and recommended for parliamentary approval a new law governing the country’s immense and largely untapped supplies of oil and natural gas. Grasping at straws for any sign of success in Iraq, the law’s international sponsors hailed a major accomplishment Shawna Bader-Blau • 19 min read
