workers' struggles

Labor in the Arab World

By joining the World Trade Organization and accepting the rules of globalization, the Arab countries have brought on themselves a rate of unemployment that verges on social catastrophe. Such is the conclusion emanating from a report of the Organization of Arab Labor (OAL), a body of the Arab League which serves as the umbrella organization for Arab trade unions. The report was issued at the most recent OAL meeting in Cairo on May 22.

Out of a total Arab labor force of 98 million, 12 million (14%) are unemployed. Another 22 million are partially unemployed. The highest jobless rate is in Iraq (60%). Next come Yemen (25%), Algeria (21%), Jordan (19%), Sudan (17%), Morocco and Lebanon (15%), Tunisia (12%), Egypt (9%) and Syria (8%). (The data are from the Quds Press Bureau, cited in the Palestinian daily al-Iyyam on June 5, together with a report from the World Labor Organization, published in al-Iyyam on November 18, 1998.)

The OAL report points out that the crisis in the Arab world is aggravated by the fact that the jobless have no programs of social protection or insurance to fall back on. Nor is relief in sight: 60 million Arabs are illiterate; 9 million children do not take part in any educational program whatever; 73 million live under the poverty line; 10 million live in a chronic state of malnutrition.

The report accuses the Arab governments of failing to work toward a solution. Moreover, their rush to take part in the WTO - to meet its demands and globalize their economies - has led to the closing of local factories and the bankruptcy of local businesses, as is evident today in Egypt.

Jordan and the Palestinian Authority (PA): Exporting Labor

The Jordanians working outside their country today number 350,000 (out of a total labor force of 1.45 million). Most are in the Gulf States. Their combined earnings come to $1.6 billion - a fifth of the total Jordanian GNP ($7 billion). After Jordan supported Iraq in the Gulf War, the 400,000 who worked in the Gulf were expelled. As a result of a thaw in relations, many have been able to return.

About 40,000 Jordanians work in Israel without permits. (We base our calculation on the number who entered as tourists and did not leave.) Israel prefers not to deport them - in order not to raise tensions with Jordan. It wants to ameliorate the poverty and social pressures faced by its neighbor in order to help solidify the new regime there. (Israelis are also the biggest investors in Jordan's industrial part at Irbid, reports Sever Plotzker in Yediot Aharonot, February 12, 1999.) What attracts Jordanians to work in Israel is the relatively high wage. According to the Jordan Times (April 21), the average worker in Jordan earns 120 dinars per month (one dinar = $1.60). The minimum wage there is 80 dinars. In Israel the same worker can make 500 dinars, sending about half of it home.

In the PA areas too there is high unemployment. Official statistics put the rate at 15% (20% in Gaza, 13% in the West Bank), but it is probably higher. According to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, Palestinians working in Israel constitute 20% of the total labor force. Their income is nearly twice that of those who work in the Territories. According to a report of the World Bank for the last quarter of 1999, workers in Gaza earned an average of 50 shekels ($12) per day; the average for Gaza and the West Bank combined was 65 shekels; but Palestinians working in Israel brought in 108 shekels.