Algeria: strike on April 26 and 27 in the civil service

A civil service strike will take place on April 26 and 27 in Algeria at the call of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CSA), which represents various sectors. This two-day strike, an “expression of workers’ anger,” is a “warning before escalation,” said a press release, the Canadian Space Agency, which includes about thirty union organizations.

These unions have called on their bases to mobilize significantly in order to improve the purchasing power of civil servants. The decision to strike was made at a weekend union meeting which was devoted to the question of the purchasing power of workers who face a generalized and “uncontrolled” rise in the prices of the products they need first.

The unionists have set up a monitoring system for the “dangerous social situation of Algerian employees”, which “harms a social explosion”. The unions pointed to “the government’s inability to rein in the rise in prices and put an end to the deterioration of public services.”

The same observation also applies to the devaluation of the Algerian dinar, inflation, and criticism of unions. They highlight “the folly of recent decisions by the government which led to the reduction of the IRG (income tax) and revision of the workers’ wage scale”, due to the “lack of positive impact on the purchasing power of workers”.

In this sense, these unions called for the establishment of a national observatory to protect purchasing power, opening the file of compensation schemes, and updating the region’s premiums. The unions of university professors and researchers (SNECHU), paramedics, local authority workers and labor inspectors joined the call for this strike.