Following an intervention by MP Farid el-Khazen, the employees of Alfa and Touch decided to take a break in their dispute with the caretaker Minister of Telecommunications, Johnny Corm, by suspending the open strike they began on February 5.
In a bid to defuse the prevailing crisis in the cell phone sector, Keserwan MP Farid el-Khazen received a delegation from the Touch and Alpha cell phone operators’ employees’ union, led by Nabil Youssef. They discussed the strike initiated by employees on Monday, February 5, and ways of resolving the crisis, which has been dragging on for several months.
At the end of the meeting, the union announced the suspension of the strike thanks to “a good-faith initiative by the el-Khazen family,” and informed citizens that the distribution of top-up cards (which were running out) had resumed on the market.
The file is to be submitted to the next Council of Ministers
The caretaker Minister of Telecommunications, Johnny Corm, was contacted by This is Beirut and assured “that he will continue to work on the dossier now that the strike has been suspended.” He also warned that he would “not work under pressure.”
Corm said that he was working for “the rights of employees and for the good of the telecommunications sector.”
He added that he would submit the dossier and the collective labor agreement to the next Council of Ministers, the date of which has not yet been set.
For the past two years, Alfa and Touch employees have been staging strikes that served no purpose other than to disrupt the already complicated daily lives of the Lebanese.
According to sources close to Alfa and Touch, the conditions laid down in the labor agreement are surprisingly far removed from the country’s economic reality.
The union of mobile operators Alfa and Touch announced on Monday, February 5 “a complete work stoppage,” demanding that employees’ salaries be adjusted and paid in full in fresh dollars. Above all, it demanded the signature of the collective bargaining agreement, failing which it would be “obligated to resort to escalatory measures.”
In this context, the union pointed out that “the salaries paid do not correspond to their real (pre-crisis) value, and with the taxes planned in the 2024 budget, they will collapse even further.”
