BBC staff in Egypt announce strike over pay, amid currency devaluation

BBC staff in Egypt announce strike over pay, amid currency devaluation

Employees at the BBC office in Cairo went on strike Wednesday over the British public broadcaster’s insistence on paying staff in local currency, which has lost much of its value over the past year.

After more than a year of negotiations, most of the staff of nearly 90 in Egypt’s capital informed the BBC that they would strike for the day. Staff members said all but a handful of employees appeared to participate.

Informed by the company that only those planning to work could enter the office, many showed up anyway in defiance but refused to do their jobs, turning the action into a sit-down strike, BBC employees in Cairo told The Washington Post. The strike was not organized by a union.

Egypt is undergoing significant currency and economic crises. The shock waves from last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine hit particularly hard in Egypt, a country that sourced the majority of its wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine, and struggled to pay for imported goods as global food prices soared. Year-on-year inflation last month neared 33 percent.

A $3 billion financial support package from the International Monetary Fund spread over nearly four years promised “a durable shift to