“The UGTT is more than a trade union, but less than a party.” This is how Héla Yousfi, a researcher and author of the book L’UGTT, une passion tunisienne (The UGTT, a Tunisian passion), defines Tunisia’s leading trade union. When asked about this description, Sami Tahri, the deputy general secretary in charge of communication, clarifies with a smile: “It is more than a trade union, true, but also more than a party.” Either way, it is clear that the UGTT has played a key role in Tunisia’s contemporary history, and many analysts consider it to be the most influential trade union in the Arab world. In recent years, however, it has been in crisis, as has the country as a whole.
The pivotal role played by the UGTT in Tunisian society dates back to the time of the anti-colonial struggle. The union was founded in 1924, after splitting ranks with the French CGT due to disagreements over the ‘national question’. “The union played an active part in the national liberation struggle, holding protests, general strikes and so on. That’s why the French government dissolved it, and even arrested and killed some of its leaders, including a general secretary, Farhat Hached,” explains Tahri from his office in the headquarters of the UGTT’s daily newspaper, Al-Shaab (The People).
Once independence was achieved, the relationship with the government was not without its tensions. “The UGTT always fought to maintain its autonomy, despite the single party regime under President [Habib] Bourguiba [who ruled Tunisia from 1957 to 1987]. And it succeeded, for the most part,” says Héla Yousfi, pointing out that the same could not be said of other countries in the region, such as Algeria and Egypt. This difference is perhaps due to the fact that Algerian and Egyptian trade union leaders professed the same pan-Arabist ideology as their regimes. In Tunisia, there was no such ideological alignment. Bourguiba held a more pro-Western stance, while, according to Yousfi, all the country’s main ideologies have always been represented among the UGTT’s members and leaders.
The union’s autonomy gave rise to several head-on collisions with the government, resulting in dozens of fatalities, such as during the revolts of 1978 and 1985, or the Revolution of 2011, which kick-started what came to be known as the Arab Spring. For many activists, the UGTT played a decisive role in the triumph of the Revolution. “The day that the UGTT in Sfax joined the street protests, I knew that Ben Ali’s days were numbered,” recalls Lamine Bouazizi, an activist from the city of Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of the uprising. Ben Ali finally fled the country two days later, ushering in a transition process that was to last a decade.
Conflict between President Kais Saied and the UGTT
While not with the same intensity as in the past, the union is once again at odds with the government. In the summer of 2021, President Kais Saied staged a self-coup, dissolved parliament and granted himself full powers. The following year, he instituted a constitutional reform that has turned Tunisia into a “hyper-presidential” republic. Almost all political parties rejected this move by Saied, an independent, populist politician with a conservative ideology.
The UGTT offered to mediate between the presidency and the parties, proposing the launch of a national dialogue process, as it had previously done in 2013, when a political crisis put the democratic transition at risk. Back then, the UGTT led the mediation between the government and the opposition that averted civil conflict. It was for this work that the UGTT, together with three other civil society organisations, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. But, on this occasion, Saied rejected the union’s offer.
Determined to eliminate any institution that could act as a counter-power, President Saied wants the UGTT to abandon its role as a political actor and limit itself to representing the interests of its members, who number around 800,000 in a country of 12 million people.
The first clash between Saied and the UGTT followed the issuance, in 2022, of Circular 20, which prohibited any state institution from negotiating with unions without the presidency’s prior authorisation. A few months later, the government withdrew the circular. The pressure on the union has nonetheless continued, with trade unionists being arrested and prosecuted, for example.
“Over a dozen trade unionists have been arrested since 2021. Only one is still in jail, but the rest have trials pending. And I fear the list is going to grow,” Sami Tahri, UGTT deputy general secretary
The regime sent another message to the union in February 2023, when it expelled Esther Lynch, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), who was visiting Tunisia to show solidarity with the UGTT in the midst of this harassment, which has even been extended to the union’s regional representatives.
Despite all these provocations, the trade union centre has avoided a head-on conflict with the regime, limiting itself to organising the odd demonstration and making critical statements in the media. “The UGTT is in a position of weakness. The main reason is that it has lost popular support. People perceive it as part of the elite that governed the country during the transition and failed to bring prosperity,” says Tarek Kahlaoui, political science professor at the South Mediterranean University in Tunis. “For many years, there has been a campaign against the UGTT, blaming its strikes and protests for the economic crisis and corruption. And there have even been a number of legal prosecutions,” adds Kahlaoui.
As reported by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in its 2024 Global Rights Index, there are “dozens of social media pages dedicated to attacking the organisation and demonising trade union work and trade unionists”. The ITUC Index ranks Tunisia among the “10 worst countries in the world for workers”, due to the “constant threat” of harsh penalties (financial and prison sentences) hanging over “trade union activists daring to carry out their normal duties”.
Romdhane Ben Amor, a researcher at the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) points to internal crisis within the union as another factor behind its weakness. “In 2021, the current leadership changed the organisation’s internal rules regarding leadership elections. A large section of the union rejected the change, and an internal opposition force emerged. The result is a block on decision making,” explains Amor. He also points to the clash between the older and younger leaders as the reason behind the crisis, given their different values and perspectives on the union’s role and strategies. Although the internal divisions were politically motivated at some point, with one faction supporting Saied, these tensions faded as the president’s drift towards authoritarianism became ever clearer.
Tahri, for his part, dismisses the weight of the divisions within the organisation. “There are different points of view in every trade union. That’s normal. But the organisation is still operational. All the union’s normal activities, including those in the various sectors, are going on as usual,” says the deputy general secretary. But for Amor, the divisions have held the union in check.
“At other times in history, the arrest of a trade unionist was met with a strong response. Now, nothing happens” Romdhane Ben Amor, researcher at the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights
As proof that the UGTT has not lost its bite, Tahri warns that his leadership has decided to hold a general strike next year, although the date has as yet to be set in consultation with the regional and sectoral unions. “The economic and social situation is very worrying, and on top of that the government has broken off all social dialogue. Many protests are already being held, although they are only local or regional in scope for the time being. What’s more, we are moving deeper and deeper into tyranny and further away from democracy [...]. I think next year will be a stormy one,” says the union leader. Should his forecast be right, renewed social unrest could offer the UGTT an opportunity to regain its pivotal role.