ABSTRACT
This book is an attempt to add knowledge and scholarship about the various causes leading up to the January 25—28, 2011, uprising in Egypt with a particular focus, which is to further explain and understand one critically important contributing variable: the independent workers and their interaction with other facets of civil society leading to what ultimately became the tipping point that caused the January 25 uprising events. In the quest to appreciate the real impact by Egyptian workers leading up to the January 2011 events, the research provided a critical review of these workers’ collective action as a social movement and included the “lost opportunities.” The workers were organized into their different groups without a central coordinating organization, so did their contentious protest actions have the desired impact? It was determined that the workers had an impact, yet not the desired result of political reform, i.e. transition to democratization, respect for freedom of association, and other civil liberties. Using the theoretical lenses of social movements and social movement unionism, with the comparative case studies methodology, the “mixed contribution” of Egyptian workers towards political reform leading up to the 2011 uprising was examined in this research endeavor.
