What economic and labor policies led to the unlikely confluence of corporatist collapse and increased labor militancy in Egypt? Theorists have argued that neoliberal policies weaken trade unions. Similarly, corporatist control has been hailed as a way to constrain labor militancy. When Egypt attempted to pursue both strategies at once, instead of reinforcing one another, neoliberalism eroded corporatist control, resulting in a resurgence of labor militancy in the country. Corporatist control involves the centralization of labor institutions and the aggregation of worker demands upward, to be handled through tripartite negotiation. In its more authoritarian form, corporatism can suggest a trade union movement controlled by the dominant party. The party provides labor quiescence by offering benefits and political access. Egypt eroded this arrangement by adopting increasingly union-free work sites to appease international corporations, reducing worker benefits and subsidies, and denying workers a say in governmental affairs. This reduction in benefits decreased worker loyalty, and allowed new, independent trade unions to gain a foothold and press for reforms. These independent unions built relationships with transnational activist networks and gained official government recognition. The successful execution of strikes and political campaigns transformed these new unions into hardened cadres of activists, who later mobilized into a general strike in the critical days of the January 25th uprising. Contentious labor actors forged linkages with other protest groups, and disseminated best practices to social, economic, religious, and political organizations that used the same tactics to pressure the regime. This paper uses detailed, original interviews of labor activists, former regime politicians, representatives of the international trade union movement, and post-revolution government officials over eleven months of fieldwork. I demonstrate that the neoliberal model used in Egypt eroded corporatist control. The implications of this will have bearings on any country using corporatist control of their labor sector in an era of neoliberal “consensus.”