In the early hours of August 4, dozens of workers made their way to the main administrative office of B.Laban, a dessert chain specializing in dairy-based sweets, in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. They had been told—some just after midnight—that their employment had been terminated.
Omar Khaled, a laid-off worker on a one-year contract at a Greater Cairo branch, was among them. “We were told to come to the main administrative office in Heliopolis to settle our dues,” he said.
“We showed up on August 4th, and many of us from different branches were there. The HR manager met with us and handed out resignation papers and acknowledgments that we had received all our dues,” he recalled.
“When we asked what our dues were, they said it was just our salary for July and the three days we worked in August. We objected, saying we still had four or five months left on our contracts and that we should have been given two months' notice. They just told us it was a management decision.”
Khaled described seeing more than twenty printed pages with names and employee codes—his among them. He and roughly half his branch’s staff were laid off. Others from Greater Cairo branches experienced the same.
According to Khaled and eight other employees who spoke to Al Manassa, most workers felt forced to sign resignation papers in exchange for their final paychecks.
“What else could we do? We need the salary,” said Ahmed Ali, laid off from a Giza branch along with 13 colleagues. “Most of us have rent, gas, water, and electricity bills. We can't go home and tell our kids there won't be food this month.”
The resignation forms included clauses forbidding media contact or legal claims against the company, along with acknowledgments of having received full dues. They also included paperwork to close social insurance accounts.
The layoffs did not begin in August. According to Ali, the process started after B.Laban’s branches reopened following a government-ordered closure in April but intensified in recent weeks.
Abdullah Qanawi, who worked in Matrouh, said he was let go in May after four years with the company. “We stood by the company during the closure crisis and defended management, and in the end, we're thrown out on the street,” Qanawi said. “I'm a transient worker, and I was staying in company-provided housing, from which I was evicted. I haven't even received my dues.”
Mohamed Saeed, a laid-off worker from Shubra El-Kheima, recalled, “After they closed the branches, the CEO went on TV crying, saying, 'We want to reopen for the sake of the workers; it's a shame for them to be homeless.' Well, he reopened, and we ended up homeless anyway. He was just using us.”
Beyond Egypt: Layoffs Reach Gulf Workers
The wave of terminations soon reached beyond Egypt’s borders.
Egyptian workers employed at B.Laban and its affiliate restaurant brand Wahmi in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman also came forward to describe arbitrary layoffs and contract violations.
One worker told Al Manassa he had been working in Oman under a “free residence visa” when he applied for a position at B.Laban. The company required him to transfer his residency to them, costing him his independent visa, which he said had cost 100,000 EGP (about $2,100).
“B.Laban issued new residence permits for me and a group of Egyptians who were already working in Oman, starting June 4, 2024, and valid for two years until June 4, 2026,” he said.
“We worked a few months, then they transferred us to one of Wahmi's branches. The restaurants were doing very well—making millions of riyals in a short time—but then demand started to drop because of rising prices. Omanis compared the prices in Oman to those in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and felt they were being ripped off.”
In May, the company informed the workers that the branch would be closed, and they would be transferred to the UAE with new contracts at the same salaries.
“They told us to return to Egypt, then travel from there to the new job. But after we got our UAE visas, the company kept stalling. When we asked about our status, they said the move to the UAE was delayed. We said, ‘Then send us back to Oman,’ and they refused. We said, ‘Let us work in Egypt instead,’ and they refused again. So we’re just supposed to sit at home, unpaid, until they need us? Who would accept that?”
Eventually, the workers agreed to a settlement that only covered their unused leave balance and plane tickets. “We lost an entire year left on our contracts—from July 2025 to July 2026—but we had to keep quiet. To claim our rights, we’d need to travel back to Oman and file a case, and we simply can’t afford those expenses.”
In March, Saudi authorities had shut down all B.Laban branches in the kingdom and suspended delivery services via mobile apps after dozens of food poisoning cases were reported in the capital, Riyadh. This prompted the Saudi government to launch an inspection campaign across the branches, during which food samples were collected and analyzed. The branches were allowed to reopen on April 20, after meeting the required health regulations.
Three workers told Al Manassa that after the April reopening, the company halved its workforce.
More than 150 laid-off workers were left in company housing for three months without salaries. “Some are still there, hoping to return to work,” said one of them. “Others went back to Egypt. We don’t know how to get our rights. We can’t afford lawyer fees in Saudi Arabia, and the company knows that and is exploiting it. Where is the Ministry of Labor to help us? Where is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry for Egyptians Abroad?”
In the UAE, B.Laban and Wahmi cut wages twice. The first reduction followed the most recent devaluation of the Egyptian pound, and the second came at the start of 2025.
“We’re paid in dirhams, but the company calculates everything in Egyptian pounds,” one worker said. “After the latest float, when the dollar exceeded 50 pounds in banks and other currencies followed, the management decided to reduce our salaries. They told us to look at how much our salaries were worth in pounds before and after the float. They said, ‘You’ll see your salary has increased—not decreased—even after we cut it.’”
Another worker said that in the past two months, the company demanded employees sign new contracts with salaries 1,000 dirhams (about $270) lower than before.
“I was earning 2,800 dirhams. The new contracts said 1,800. Those who refused were dismissed and replaced with workers brought in from Egypt. They tricked people by giving them vacation, then notified them while they were home that they were no longer needed. This led to a lot of terminations—on top of the downsizing plan that’s been in place for two months.”
Background: The Closure Crisis
B.Laban expanded rapidly in recent years, growing to operate branches across nine Arab countries and employing more than 25,000 people, but in April 2025, Egyptian authorities shut down all the company’s 110 domestic outlets.
The National Food Safety Authority announced that “the closure orders came after laboratory results from samples taken by regulatory committees from raw materials and products in factories and branches showed the presence of pathogenic bacteria, which are a primary cause of food poisoning.”
During the crisis, B.Laban’s management publicly appealed for help, repeatedly emphasizing the potential impact on workers. In a phone call aired on Al-Hekaya, CEO Moamen Adel said: “We have 25,000 workers. 25,000 families will be affected by the closure… The workers are sitting at home, asking me why we closed and what will happen to them, and I don't know how to answer them.”
Following the company’s appeal, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi intervened. B.Laban was invited to an urgent meeting with “relevant authorities” and committed to complying with Egyptian market safety standards. In return, the government allowed it to reopen, and the company issued a statement thanking the president for his “paternal concern.”
Transport and Industry Minister Kamel Al-Wazir later declared, “The company’s factories are like a pharmacy—very clean—and I take responsibility for that.” He added, “The sales outlets are also very clean.”
According to the minister, El-Sisi “would call every so often because he sees everything and says it’s not right that the factories in Sharjah and Saudi Arabia are working while we’re going to shut down a factory in Egypt.”
