This report was prepared by Mohamed Ramadan, researcher at the Economic and Social Justice Unit of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), and edited by Wael Gamal, director of the unit.

I. Introduction

This year's Labour Day marks a very difficult year for all wage earners in Egypt. The public debt crisis, the exchange rate crunch that resulted in significant devaluations of the local currency against the US dollar, the successive inflation shocks, the rises in commodity prices, and the economic policies sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have all dealt successive painful blows to wages and living standards of the majority of wage dependants in Egypt.