Only Fair

• Author: Nada al-Nashif and Zafiris Tzannatos
• Position: Assistant Director General and Regional Director for the Arab States at the International Labour Organization. is author of the joint International Labour Organization/United Nations Development Programme report “Rethinking Economic Growth: Towards Productive and Inclusive Arab Societies,” which is the basis for this article.

Rahma Refaat, an Egyptian trade unionist from Cairo, has fought for social justice for decades.Â

“The first time I was arrested was in 1977 while protesting the bread price increase under President Anwar Sadat,” she says. “I was detained for six months.”

Refaat has been arrested countless times since, most recently during the January 25, 2011, protests that ushered in Egypt’s first democratically elected government. “We went to Tahrir to reject the humiliation of unemployment and oppression,” she says.Â

One outcome of the mass protests was the formation of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, breaking a six-decade state monopoly on the trade union movement. Scores more independent trade unions have since emerged.Â

But the revolution is still not over for Refaat and other activists: not until workers, employers, and civil society are involved in the policymaking process.Â

“Restrictions on unions must be lifted and social dialogue seriously pursued if we are to make Egypt a place for all Egyptians,” she says. “Politics and economics must go together—that’s unavoidable.”

Ordinary people

The Arab Spring came with little warning. The consensus had been that Arab governments were on the right track economically, if not politically—focusing on “economic reforms now, political ones later.” They were driving through long-awaited pro-market reforms—spearheaded by Tunisia and Egypt—and economies were growing relatively quickly. Some even spoke of an “Arab renaissance.”

But this description failed to capture what really mattered to most people: decent work, fair access to education and health care, support in old age, accountable government, and a say in how the country is run. It glossed over two decades of skewed economic policies, a widening social protection deficit, and the absence of institutionalized social dialogue between governments, workers, employers, and other segments of society. Instead, it focused on a narrow set of pro-market indicators such as the rate of privatization, trade openness, debt and inflation reduction, and foreign direct investment.Â

And when policymakers did look at the right indicators, they often misinterpreted them. For example, the focus on high youth unemployment missed the point that adult unemployment in the region was the highest in the world. Large numbers of young workers in fact constitute a window of demographic opportunity that, if properly used, can add bonus points to the economic growth rate. The quality of education in the region has indeed been low, but more relevant is the unsophisticated nature of production, which continued to demand only low levels of education and skill.Â

Amid declining social protection and in the absence of social dialogue, the living standards improved for some, but most Arab citizens could not reap the rewards of economic liberalization. Development failed to help the vast majority of the population and could not meet the aspirations of the rising number of increasingly educated Arabs. Arab citizens—young and old—suffered from a heightened sense of alienation and insecurity.Â

Not that fast

Arab governments emerged from the region’s “lost decade” of the 1980s—which witnessed a regional slowdown due to tumbling oil prices—with a slew of reforms to tackle stagnant, or even declining, per capita GDP, rising fiscal burdens, slow productivity growth, and low competitiveness. But these measures...