Pay in Egypt's industrial sector is low and working conditions sometimes unsafe.

Just as it maintains a hands-off policy concerning trade, the state refuses to intervene to regulate working conditions.

At least seven workers' associations are formed, focusing on conditions and pay, between 1899 and 1907.

Strikes are organized among cigarette wrappers; warehouse, port, and railroad workers; and spinners in factories.

The working-class movement receives considerable support from Mustafa Kamil's National Party (Al
Hizb al Watani), which sets up schools in working-class areas and assists unions with publicity and legal counsel during strikes.

The unions, like the nationalist movement, are severely repressed by the government.