A good feature by AP journalist and friend Paul Schemm…

Workers banged drums at a sit-in rally and waved pay stubs for wages as low as US$40 a month amid soaring inflation, shouting that they cannot feed their children. Women workers rattled off the increasing prices they pay in their daily shopping.
The government rushed Saturday to resolve a weeklong strike at Egypt’s largest textile mill, a sign of authorities’ worries over the biggest wave of labor unrest the country has seen for decades.
But the underlying causes of the series of strikes over the past year remain: The poor feel squeezed out of Egypt’s liberalizing economy.
“What is meat, what does it look like? I haven’t seen meat for months,” said one of the many female workers participating in the strike by 27,000 employees at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Factory in the gritty industrial city of Mahalla el-Kobra. She gave her name only as Aida, fearing harassment by police.
“Look how thin he is, he doesn’t eat any meat,” said another woman pushing forward her frail 7-year-old child, who looked much younger. “Look at his clothes, he looks like a beggar,” she said, adding clothes and school books to the list of items increasingly beyond her reach.
The World Bank on Wednesday ranked Egypt has the world’s most improved economy for investors in 2007 thanks to the new government’s wide-ranging economic reforms. The country has seen an average growth rate of 7 percent for last three years, double what it was previously.
But even government officials have acknowledged in recent months that the improving economy has not trickled down to the majority of people in this country of nearly 77 million. Inflation soared to 12 percent since December, up from a low of 3.4 percent just a year before. Though the government says it fell to 8 percent last month, independent economists put the real rate at about twice that.

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