It was business as usual for Orascom, a gigantic Egyptian conglomerate with major interests in everything from Cairene highway construction to Red Sea luxury resorts to cell phones in Iraq.

On February 26 Orascom Construction Industries, one of the Orascom family of enterprises, proudly announced that it had acquired the International Company for Manufacturing Boilers and Steel Fabrication (IBSF) for $13.6 million. The corporate press release trumpeted the doubling of Orascom’s steel capacity, but mentioned nothing about the fate of the firm’s workers or its recent history. Those stories, as told by a group of skilled IBSF workers -- a lathe operator, a machinery fitter, a welder and a storeroom supervisor, each with at least 20 years’ experience in the factory -- are the underbelly of the advancing neoliberal agenda in Egypt. Fearing reprisals from the firm, they asked that their names not be used and spoke in the name of their trade union committee and its president, Husayn Abu Dahab.

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