Algeria: Municipal workers launch nationwide strike action

To show their lingering discontent at their pay and job security prospects, municipal workers throughout Algeria have decided to launch a fresh nationwide two-day strike in order to press ahead for their long-neglected socio-professional claims.

• Half a million workers in 1,451 communes today  again went on strike to demand a new allowances scheme and the retention of the established retirement scheme, according to organizers from the National Autonomous Union of Public Administration Personnel (SNAPAP).
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• Last December, the government ended an early retirement plan that allowed workers to draw a pension after 32 years of service.
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• “We have not had any positive response from the government during the latest strike actions,” SNAPAP president Ali Yahia told Echorouk, adding that the next step is a two-day strike next week that will be extended if necessary.
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• The strikers are also planning a sit-in in front of the palace of government in central Algiers as part of their protest action.
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• Ali Yahia told Echorouk that rank-and-file support for the strike is widely expected to be very high in most regions of the country.
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• The top salary for a commune manager is no more than 30,000 dinars. Some employees receive less than the national guaranteed minimum age of 9,000 dinars, even though they may have been on the job for more than 20 years.
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• Job security is also a sensitive issue for a large segment of the communes’ workforce.
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• “Civil servants on contracts make up 20% of the total number,” Ali Yahia asserted.
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• “The majority of them are young people, employed as part of the social action, pre-employment and other state arrangements to support employment. These people receive pay of 3,000 dinars, and have no rights as workers, since their employment is transient.”
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• Contract workers may be laid off at any time with no advance warning, Yahia added. Algerians looking to secure legal documentation such as birth and death certificates were seriously bothered by the last communal workers’ work stoppage.
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