This paper explores the role of the Egyptian public sector within protest movements and how this relationship has changed overtime. The recent protests in Egypt have renewed interest in the role of workers in demonstration and opposition movements. While many observers have focused on private sector unions, syndicates and trade associations, less attention has been given to public sector employees and their response to and participation in protests. These actors are especially important given the regime's historical dependence on the public sector and vast bureaucracy, which have traditionally constituted vital constituencies for the regime. By focusing largely on private actors and groups, existing accounts leave several important questions unresolved. Does the public sector participate in protests, and if so, on whose behalf? Do they support the opposition or, as some recent media accounts have suggested, buttress the regime in times of turmoil? Alternatively, is the public sector too varied and diverse to characterize in such generalities? To answer these questions, this paper takes a broadly comparative approach, exploring variation across both time and economic sectors. I begin by investigating the changing role of the public sector in protest movements since 1952. I embed and contextualize this group (to the extent we can characterize public sector workers as such) within the broader opposition movement and explore their relative coordination and competition with private sector workers and groups. In answering these questions, I draw on various sources, both traditional (e.g. personal narratives and news reports) and sources only made available through new social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter). Ultimately, I show how protest movements have changed overtime with the proliferation these new media, and how these changes have had manifold effects on the composition and dynamics within opposition groups. Although once critical to their success or failure, the public sector and bureaucracy have become increasingly less focal within protest movements, which have grown more broadly inclusive and egalitarian with these new media.