From the Los Angeles Times…

Militancy by laborers who have split from regime-controlled unions presents President Mubarak with a widening crisis.
President Hosni Mubarak faces discontent from many quarters, but perhaps the most intense criticism resonates from the banners and shaking fists of militant workers who have broken away from government-controlled unions and staged sporadic strikes across the nation.
The Egyptian government frequently muffles free speech and political dissent, but these ragged and often disorganized picket lines present a widening crisis for a president viewed as detached from the working class and unable to lift wages and stem double-digit inflation.
“Mubarak doesn’t care about workers at all anymore,” said Mohammed Shorbagy, who held a Koran in a plastic bag and stood amid litter and lean-tos during a strike last month at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Factory in this Nile Delta city. “Why is the president asleep? We’ve been here for four days and he’s done nothing.”
Shorbagy was one of thousands of male and female strikers who hanged their company president in effigy and took over the textile mill’s courtyard, banging drums and giving speeches. Riot police and undercover security officers made a passive show of force and gave workers room to vent, appearing not to want to provoke the bloody unrest that characterized strikes in Egypt more than half a century ago.
The weeklong strike last month ended peacefully when the government-owned company made concessions on wages and profit-sharing bonuses that fell short of workers’ demands. But the mill and its 27,000 employees have become a focal point of the labor unrest. Nearly a year ago, the same workers struck for several days, igniting solidarity across Egypt as work stoppages spread to railway, flour and other industries whose salaries and benefits have not kept pace with sharp rises in the cost of living.
“This is the largest, most militant strike wave since the 1940s,” said Sameh Naguib, a labor expert and sociology professor at the American University in Cairo. “Hundreds of thousands of workers are involved and it’s spreading quite rapidly. . . . The question is how this labor movement may play into a larger democratic movement against the government.”
Mubarak’s economic reforms, including privatization and lower corporate tax rates, have led to 7% economic growth in each of the last three years. Those otherwise impressive statistics have not benefited workers whose stagnant salaries have been decimated by wildly surging prices that have recently pushed inflation to monthly rates as high as 15%. This has created resentment among the lower and middle classes, who say Mubarak’s economic liberalization has benefited only those with government connections.
The strikes come as Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party, or NDP, has cracked down on political opposition, jailed journalists and editors, closed a human rights organization and imprisoned hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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