Sit-in by employees of the Tripoli municipality on July 15, 2025. (Photo provided by Michel Hallak)
Employees of the Tripoli municipality held a sit-in Tuesday morning in front of the city’s municipal building to demand salary adjustments as well as medical assistance and "to denounce the authorities’ refusal to respond to these justified requests," L'Orient-Le Jour's correspondent in the region reported.
The president of the municipal council, Abdel Hamid Kraymeh, joined the protesters, along with the president of the Union of Workers' Syndicates of North Lebanon, Shadi al-Sayyed, and the heads of the unions of municipal employees in Tripoli and Mina, Omar Dalal and Ahmad Moursali. The demonstrators said that this sit-in was the beginning of a series of actions that could lead to an open-ended strike.
Lebanon has been mired in a severe economic and financial crisis since 2019, with the local currency collapsing, causing an erosion of salaries and purchasing power, while inflation has skyrocketed. Before the crisis, the minimum wage stood at LL 675,000, or about $450 at the official rate of LL 1,507.5 to the dollar. At the end of June, however, the government approved a 50 percent increase in the minimum wage, raising it to LL 28 million ($312, or a 56 percent increase), effective next month. But many unions still consider this increase insufficient.
