Arts and Culture in the Mideast

Garbage Collectors and the Struggle For Workers' Rights in Yemen

This article, written by Atiaf Z. Alwazir, appeared on Jadaliyya on June 01,2012

“I will do everything I can to grow a field in the dessert”

- Haidar Swaid, Member of the Garbage Collectors Syndicate

In both the foreign and local press, conventional frameworks for understanding the uprising in Yemen locate its popular impetus within two main social groupings: the disaffected middle-class urban youth, who first occupied the streets and squares and called for an end to both corruption and the ruling regime; and tribesmen and political party members, who soon joined them in solidarity and common cause. They also note the ongoing Houthi and Southern movements whose narratives of subjugation were unevenly, and now unsuccessfully, incorporated into the broader national frameworks of the revolution. However, these narratives have failed to account for the important role which strikes, demonstrations, and other actions of civil disobedience by organized workers played in the build-up to the uprising and in the continued struggle for the social, political, and economic transformation of Yemen.

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*Photo Credit: IRIN Photos

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