The International Trade Union Confederation has branded a plan to outlaw strikes by Egypt's military government "a betrayal of the revolution."
It demanded on Tuesday that Prime Minister Essam Sharaf scrap the proposed decree which would threaten workers who withdraw their labour with prison terms of up to a year and fines of up to £56,000.
The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) has described the plan, which has already been approved by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, as "a grave and worrisome development."
And ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow said: "Millions of Egyptian workers continue to work for poverty wage and depriving them of the right to strike, a fundamental right under international law, would remove an essential means for working people to achieve economic and social justice."
Ms Burrows said that by seeking to repress legitimate union activity the junta would also "suffocate the development of a vibrant civil society, which Egypt desperately needs for building democracy."
The EFITU has called on authorities to start dealing with Egyptian workers as "citizens, not subjects."
But the ETUF - the officially sanctioned trade union centre under former president Hosni Mubarak - has welcomed the proposal to make strikes illegal, apparently because it would serve to undermine the burgeoning EFITU.
Ms Burrows condemned the "discredited and unrepresentative remnant of the old regime" for continuing to seek to talk on behalf of Egypt's working people.
She said that like workers everywhere "they are perfectly capable of organising their own trade unions, but they can only do this effectively if the authorities refrain from the anti-democratic habits of the past."
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