The unprecedented mobilizations that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s presidency in February 2011 have involved a broad range of Egyptians who share economic and political grievances against the regime. From workers to medical doctors, university professors, unemployed graduates or tax collectors, different sectors of Egyptian society have joined their efforts to oust the Egyptian president. These protests have taken place against a background of increasing mobilization in Egypt over the past ten years, fuelled by the degradation of Egyptians’ living conditions. Between 2004 and 2010, two million workers have voiced their grievances through strikes, sit-ins and other forms of protest against poor living conditions caused by the erosion of wages, rising inflation and precarious employment. This paper examines the organization of workers’ collective action, and is based on an ethnographic study of two textile companies from the Nile Delta region conducted from 2008 to 2010 in Mahalla al-Kubra and Shibin al-Kawm. The Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), a state-controlled organization designed to control rather than represent workers, recognized only one of the 1,900 protests that took place during this seven-year period. Moreover, political parties and opposition groups do not have strong ties to industrial workers and have only a limited presence among Cairo intellectuals. Yet this paper argues that these protests have not taken place in a vacuum, and considers the leaders, social networks and organizations that have enabled mobilization to take place. This paper also departs from most social movements analyzes of the strikes that have been state-centered, and have focused on the “politicization of the movement” and the repression-opportunity framework. While it is true that the state influences workers’ room to maneuver, both as a negotiating partner and through its ability to repress protests, state-centered analysis has overlooked the dynamics of workers’ collective action.