Is the Working Class Still With Us or Did It Vanish with the Winds of Al-Inqadh?
Abdullah Ali Ibrahim
Al-Midan (March 28, 2017) published an anonymous investigation about the conditions of female workers who made up about 50% of the factory workforce. This is one of many similar reports about workers, which have been absent in a newspaper that positions the working class at the core of its thoughts and practices. The newspaper is more focused on trivial matters related to the “kizan” (Islamists) than on the serious issues facing working mothers, following the habits of petty bourgeoisie in social media. Perhaps Al-Midan, like some petty bourgeoisie, thought the working class evaporated into thin air when the railways collapsed, or so I understood from a comment by veteran writer, Mr. Sadiq Muhaisi. Perhaps Al-Midan and the petty bourgeoisie believed that the only remaining working-class women are the tea vendors (who are also small-scale producers) who have become the stars of protests against local authorities.
The plight of workers now is not only from their employers. The editor found a factory that was shut down permanently, which had previously employed 100 workers, mostly women. The burden of taxes on the owner, along with the government allowing imports of its products (biscuits) from abroad, led to its closure in an uncompetitive market.
The editor also found complaints from workers about savage capitalism. It is clear that working hours in factories have become 10 to 12 hours instead of the eight-hour shift, a long-established union gain. In a factory owned by an Arab investor, a worker said she worked 12 hours every day except Friday, for a monthly wage of 1,000 pounds. The worker has to wait for the governor’s bus because it is the cheapest option, to reach her family by 10 PM and return to the factory by 8 AM. The editor also found a worker operating a production machine in a factory dealing with hazardous materials (which the editor did not specify). The factory only provides breakfast and lemon for a shift that lasts 11 hours. A worker at a beverage factory reported a leakage of toxic gas harmful to the lungs and heart, but nothing was done to fix the situation until she left the job. A worker who asked to remain anonymous mentioned that she travels on her own expense after a 10-hour shift. Another worker works from 8 AM to 5 PM without health insurance. The cost of treatment is deducted from her weekly salary, amounting to 250 pounds.
Factory owners deceive workers with coercive contracts. A soft drink factory froze the wages of workers who only get breakfast for their three shifts, paying them 20 pounds per day. Another worker has a six-month contract, earning 40 pounds per day plus 5 pounds for transportation, with one meal per shift and an incentive for Friday shifts, working 12 hours. The factory provides health insurance for permanent workers, while the management contracts other workers for six months, after which the contract ends and the worker may request renewal. Thus, they remain temporary workers without rights. Another worker at a plastic factory said she receives treatment in a private hospital when injured but has not received proper training on the production line she works on. The owner of a famous soap factory justified the low wages by citing taxes, and despite the factory’s high costs, its revenue is poor.
One of the most reasonable sections of the investigation was the expert testimony of Mr. Qasim Ali. He attributed the difficulties of workers to the labor law, which does not cover small establishments. Workers are entitled to form a union when their number exceeds 100, although in reality, very few factories employ more than 30 workers. As a result, such factories are not subject to labor laws, health insurance, or workplace safety regulations. Consequently, these factories have abandoned the eight-hour workday, extending it to 12 hours or slightly less. The expert pointed out that there are no independent inspection bodies responsible for enforcing the law, and he criticized politicians for focusing more on political matters than on workers’ issues.
I have never read such an anonymous “unfocused” report as the one in Al-Midan. It lacked the communist zeal, written in the passive voice in matters where the actor should have been specified. It was also vague about the names of factories and their owners, referring to them as “a detergent factory,” “one of the plastic factories in Bahri owned by Arab investors,” “another famous detergent factory,” or “one of the major beverage factories.” I could not help but ask: why this concealment of the crime? What is your Marxism waiting for?
The editor softened the blow on capitalism (which communists call “parasitic,” from their heads, not from their books). He did not mention the name of the famous factory or its owner, who refused to meet with him. The secretary of the owner refused to allow the editor to meet the workers and instructed the journalist to “wait outside the factory.” The strangest part was when the journalist said that the factory owner “preferred to withhold his name,” as if he had the right to do so in a communist newspaper, while exploiting the workers.
No communist party has ever been more Marxist without firsthand study of the working class. Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England, and Lenin wrote about the conditions of workers in Russia. In Sudan, we have come to know the conditions of workers through practical engagement. The working class, in the context of our country’s capitalist development, deserves a mature study that begins with the question: Does the working class still exist, or has it disappeared with the winds of Al-Inqadh?
