Tunisia: moving with the times
By Eileen Byrne
Since the 2011 revolution the historic UGTT labour federation finds itself in a changed landscape—which it helped create
Some 500 senior members of the historic trade union federation, the Union générale Tunisienne du travail (UGTT), gathered in early May in Tozeur, an oasis resort in southern Tunisia. More than four years after the revolution that overthrew the regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, the UGTT’s national council was to debate future policy in a dramatically changed political landscape. The history of the UGTT is intertwined with that of independent Tunisia. For decades it enjoyed a largely privileged and symbiotic relationship with two authoritarian regimes, first under Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first post-independence president, and then under his successor, Mr Ben Ali. Nowadays it claims 650,000 members—drawn predominantly from the public sector—in a country with a population of just 10.9m.
It is arguably well-positioned to adapt to a new era: since Tunisian independence in 1956, the UGTT has on occasion been a crucial mediator between those pushing for change and those in power. The UGTT secretary-general, Hocine Abassi, a white-haired 67-year-old in an open-necked shirt, delivered the keynote speech at Tozeur. Elected following the revolution, he has helped keep the UGTT centre-stage as the country transitions to democracy. Mr Abassi’s contribution was key in averting an acute political crisis in 2013. But he could still be a tough negotiator on labour issues, he signalled to his audience. The previous month he had berated Tunisia’s business community for its apparent reluctance to make job-generating investments in regions where unemployment was highest. Most businesspeople “just run after privileges and avoid paying taxes”, he told the London-based Al Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper. “Most of them just see Tunisia as a place to live, while they invest their money abroad.
”The Utica business association, with whom the UGTT was due to enter a new round of private-sector pay talks, countered that by encouraging labour militancy, the UGTT was itself to blame for “creating poverty and unemployment”. Local media predicted that, despite Mr Abassi’s grandstanding, the trade unions and the private sector employees’ organisation would eventually reach agreement, as they had so often in the past. The UGTT has long seen itself as simultaneously a labour organisation focused on workers’ pay and conditions, and as a political actor. Founded in 1946, it campaigned alongside Mr Bourguiba’s Neo-Destour party for independence from France. Following independence in 1956, two successive authoritarian rulers—Mr Bourguiba until 1987 and then Mr Ben Ali—blocked the emergence of multiparty democracy. They did, however, espouse goals of social development, including education for all, health services and equal rights for women. The UGTT, with Tunisia’s large public sector making up its core membership, was seen as a crucial partner for the state in this modernising project.
For decades its leadership performed a balancing act between providing space for political dissent and colluding with authoritarian rule. In her book “UGTT, Une Passion Tunisienne”, Hèla Yousfi , a sociologist at Université Paris-Dauphine in France, describes how the federation’s bureaucratic hierarchy co-existed with the rank and fi le’s resistance to the regime. This current of dissent was “dominated by leftist and Arab nationalist political movements…which came to the fore at times of crisis”, she said. It predominated in the teachers’ and telecoms unions, and in certain UGTT regional structures. Relations between the regime and the trade union movement broke down sporadically, notably after a general strike triggered wider unrest in 1978, and after the bread riots of 1984. After the 1978 turmoil, many trade unionists spent time in prison. As Mr Bourguiba began another crackdown in 1985, the Tunisian Islamist movement under Rachid Ghannouchi, by then the strongest opposition current, expressed support for the trade unionists’ stand on “social justice”.
When the Islamist party was later edged off the political scene, and repressed through imprisonment and torture, the UGTT would to a limited extent provide a safe haven for its sympathisers. Its overall ethos nevertheless remained hostile to Islamism. In 2008, resentment against allegedly corrupt UGTT regional leaders in the phosphate mining area in the centre-west governorate of Gafsa sparked protests that were harshly suppressed. Leftists among the UGTT grassroots found common cause with the unemployed, as they would again during the 2011 revolution. Some in the upper levels of the union’s leadership were meanwhile drawn into the deepening corruption of the closing years of the Ben Ali regime (as indeed were large parts of the country’s business world). In early January 2011, the UGTT leadership came under pressure from some of its grassroots members to get behind the gathering revolt. On January 11th, after dozens of deaths, the federation’s administrative commission denounced the police for opening fire on unarmed demonstrators.
But it did not call for the fall of the regime. In the provincial towns where the revolution began, UGTT activists would later claim that their organisational know-how had helped channel the protests into a more effective—if still largely spontaneous—movement. With Mr Ben Ali’s departure on January 14th, the lid was taken off pent up discontent not just over youth unemployment, but also over low wages and poor working conditions. A wave of strikes, sit-ins and roadblocks— with or without union involvement—followed. Tunisia’s first democratic elections, in October 2011, produced a coalition government headed by the Islamist party, Nahda, which also controlled the largest bloc in the newly elected constituent assembly. The following December, the UGTT held its first five-yearly Congress since Mr Ben Ali’s departure, in the Mediterranean resort of Tabarka. Figures in the executive bureau who were regarded as most compromised by the old regime were replaced.
They included Abdessallem Jrad, secretary- general from 2000, who was banned temporarily from leaving the country as he faced corruption charges. Among delegates at Tabarka, arguments for unity and a certain continuity prevailed, however, amid anxiety over relations with the incoming Islamist-led government. Reforms to the UGTT’s internal structure and procedures were therefore postponed, Ms Yousfi notes. The two political assassinations in 2013—of leftist politician Chokri Belaid in February, and the Arab nationalist politician Mohamed Brahmi in July—dramatically ratcheted up tensions. Leftists laid the blame for the killings at the door of the Nahda-led government, faulting it for tolerating the rise of ultra-conservative Islamist groups. Some political players in Tunisia—including leftist parties, the new party Nida Tounes (“Tunisian Call”) with its old-regime links, and even some voices within the UGTT—believed that with one further push from the streets, Tunisia’s Islamist-led coalition government could similarly be toppled from power.
The removal of Egyptian president, Muhammad Morsi, on July 3rd 2013 bolstered this hope. But Mr Abassi, emerging into the spotlight as a key mediator, refused to see Nahda removed from the political scene. He showed perseverance in lengthy inter-party negotiations, convinced that dialogue would produce a way out of the crisis and keep Tunisia’s transition to democracy on course. The Islamist party, after all, had a majority in the democratically elected assembly. As tensions eased, a new constitution approved by the assembly in January 2014 was hailed as showing a similar spirit of “consensus”, bridging the ideological divide between Islamist and non-Islamist. By taking a high political profile, the UGTT had largely staved off a move towards trade union “pluralism”. Two rival federations had been created in 2011, the CGTT and the UTT, both led by former members of the UGTT hierarchy. Ismael Sahbani, founder of the UTT, had preceded Mr Jrad as UGTT secretary-general; similar criticisms were levelled at him over alleged lack of transparency.
Fresh nationwide elections in autumn 2014 produced a new, centrist coalition government in which the Islamists have just one cabinet seat. The UGTT meeting in Tozeur prepared the agenda for the federation’s next national congress, due to be held before the end of 2016. Among other mooted reforms, is a plan to introduce quotas in 2016 to correct the underrepresentation of women within its various elected bodies. The UGTT’s latest challenge is to reinvent itself as a progressive organisation that defends workers not just in the public sector, but also in the private sector, where many struggle on low pay. How far its leadership and its grassroots may wish to see it continue playing a political role, and how far it will be open to various shades of political opinion, including that of Islamists, should become clear over the coming years. Early 2014 saw a resurgence of wildcat industrial action. Railway workers, for example, ignored the usual procedure for having their strikes endorsed by the UGTT hierarchy.
Some local commentators began to wonder whether the organisation’s “historical legitimacy” had been eroded. The UGTT may also have to revise its funding sources in this era of greater transparency. Before the revolution, bank loans were readily available. In the Hay al-Khadra suburb of Tunis, an impressive new headquarters, begun before the revolution, was built, reportedly at a cost of $12m. The UGTT has yet to move into it. Following an initial inauguration on May 1st 2013, the federation’s deputy secretary-general, Bouali Mbarki, told reporters that it may decide to let the building to bring in badly needed revenue. For now, the UGGT is still based downtown in the whitewashed, traditional-style building where its members rallied on the morning that Mr Ben Ali fell.
