Jan 17, 2019
Some 670,000 workers in Tunisia waged a nationwide one-day strike today to protest the government’s refusal to increase wages for civil servant workers. The strike follows months of intense negotiations between the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) and the government, which refused to increase wages in 2019 because of its commitment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to freeze public-sector wages and spending and balance the budget.
Hundreds of thousands of Tunisian workers pack the streets of Tunis for a one-day strike. Credit: UGTT
Workers began the strike at midnight. By morning, hundreds of thousands gathered at the UGTT headquarters in the capital, Tunis, and at regional offices across the country, rallying to cries of “We want employment, freedom, national dignity.” The UGTT says all public service workers took part in the strike, including workers from state-owned enterprises.
Public-sector wages have failed to keep up with rising prices, leading to a decline in purchasing power. The UGTT says the monthly minimum wage of about $128 is one of the lowest in the world, while Tunisia’s Institute of Strategic Studies says real purchasing power has fallen by 40 percent since 2014. The UGTT points out that private-sector workers have seen a 6 percent pay increase for 2019.
In addition, the government’s proposed $60 tax increase would severely impact workers’ wages, social security and the prices of consumer goods, UGTT Deputy General Sami Tahri said at a press conference yesterday.
Only one flight left the airport, and the strike affected ports, public transportation and central, regional and local administrations. Vital care at hospitals continued.
Tunisia struck a deal with the IMF in December 2016 for a loan program worth around $2.8 billion to address an economic crisis that includes high unemployment and stagnant wages. During negotiations with the UGTT, the government delegation withdrew many times to consult with the IMF, according to the global union IndustriAll.
May 9, 2018
Kalthoum Barkallah, Solidarity Center senior program officer and master trainer in Tunisia, this week received a lifetime achievement award from the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT). The award, the nationwide union’s highest honor, is given to union activists for their dedication to union work and in recognition of their struggle in the defense of workers and human rights.
The UGTT award is the union’s highest honor.
“We are enormously proud of Kalthoum and the great contribution she brings to the labor movement through her incredible dedication and accomplishments,” says Hind Cherrouk, Solidarity Center country program director for the Maghreb region. “Kalthoum’s expertise in nurturing and training new generations of leaders, especially women unionists, has ensured the labor movement in Tunisia and beyond is served by new, skilled union activists.”
Presented by UGTT General Secretary Noureddine Tabboubi, the award reads: “Honoring sister and union activist Kalthoum Barkallah in appreciation for her dedication and perseverance in support for union work.”
In conferring the award, Taboubbi noted Kalthoum’s popularity among the UGTT’s union structures from local to national.
“When I began the struggle for democracy, freedom and the rights of women in 1979, I never for a moment imagined that there would be a day when I would be recognized or honored for my part in realizing these noble objectives,” says Barkallah.
Building Women’s Leadership in Their Unions
As an activist with the Tunisian General Federation of Railways, Barkallah was first elected as a deputy general secretary in 1983, heading up training within the union. She later was elected deputy general secretary in charge of international relations. In the railways industry, Barkallah was known as the “iron lady” for her determination and struggle to challenge her male colleagues in a male-dominated sector to achieve equality and justice for all.
As an active union leader with the UGTT, Barkallah built on the gender empowerment training she began in the railway sector to reach union members in a variety of industries throughout Tunisia, championing women’s rights there and supporting her sisters beyond its borders.
Barkallah, who in 2006 was elected president of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)–Arab Women’s committee, also recently received an award from the ITF Women’s Committee for her fight and struggle in support of women workers in the transport sector.
Throughout her decades of service to workers and their unions, Barkallah balanced both work and family duties, raising two sons who each now have their own children.
May 1, 2018
Chanting support for their union and for worker rights, more than 7,000 members of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) packed the Menzah Sports Palace in Tunis today in a boisterous, enthusiastic May Day celebration.
“We are committed to defend worker rights and workers’ interests and we shall struggle for more justice, equality and freedom”–UGTT Secretary-General Noureddine Tabboubi Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
“Our principles are to defend the independence of this country and to defend the people of this country,” said UGTT Secretary-General Noureddine Tabboubi. “We are committed to defend worker rights and workers’ interests and we shall struggle for more justice, equality and freedom. We shall combat all forms of abuse and oppresssion.”
In a speech interrupted frequently by chants of “Long live UGTT” and “With blood and with spirit we remain loyal to the UGTT,” Tabboubi outlined the union’s efforts to work with the government in reforming public services without resorting to privatization, a move the union says would lower wages and create precarious jobs and reduce or eliminate access to pensions and health care.
“The UGTT’s priority is for the national interest”–UGTT member Dhouha Kouki Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
UGTT has been the leading force in protecting democratic gains following the 2011 Tunisian uprising in which workers, outraged at high unemployment and low wages despite the country’s economic prosperity, ousted Tunisia’s dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. During the ensuring interim government, UGTT proposed a constitution that included the freedom to form unions and strike, proposals that were maintained when the new constitution was approved.
“In the light of the weakness of the different goverments, the UGTT remained the only reasonable power that ensured stability, but it also ensured a balance between workers and the government,” says Dhouha Kouki, a call center worker and UGTT member who took part in the May Day celebration. “UGTT’s priority is for the national interest.”
As workers waved Tunisan and UGTT flags, some wearing shirts imprinted with the demands of the 2011 uprising–“Employment, Freedom, National Dignity”–Taboubi said: “The goals of our revolution shall be achieved and nobody can confiscate our right to freedom, dignity and social justice.”
Economy Teeters on Crisis
A UGTT member holds a sign reading, “I am a trade unionist and I defend my country and my fellow citizens’ institutions.” Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
With 750,000 members across Tunisia, UGTT represents mineworkers, textile workers, professional employees and many others, including 75 percent of public-sector employees. The union federation has organized 250,000 members since the 2011 uprising, many of whom were formerly subcontracted government employees with low wages, no access to social benefits or secure employment. UGTT worked with the interim government within a month of the revolution to bring subcontracted workers into full-time employment, says Sami Tahri, secretary-general in charge of information.
Since then, the UGTT, a Solidarity Center partner, negotiated a 6 percent wage increase for private-sector workers in 2012, an 11 percent increase in the mininum wage in 2014, and an improved contract for high school teachers in 2015, according to “Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.”
Yet the increasing number of workers in the informal sector–which represents more than 54 percent of the country’s gross domestic product–lack of investment in job creation, especially by financial institutions, and an official unemployment rate of 16 percent, including 250,000 university graduates in a country of 11.6 million, mean Tunisia is facing an economic crisis, says Tahri.
Workers in the informal economy are “deprived of all their economic rights and have no social protection like paid sick leave or pensions,” he says, speaking through a translator. Tahri says the official unemployment rate is likely much higher because many people are not counted.
Retirees are suffering the most, especially those who worked for private employers, Tahri says. Many private-sector employers do not fully pay into the country’s social security system, resulting in pensions so low that 25 percent of retirees receive less than the minimum wage, and another 30 percent receive only the minimum wage, says Tahri.
Creating a ‘Solidarity Economy’
Sami Tahri, UGTT Secretary General in charge of Communications, says UGTT is assisting workers through multiple strategies. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
The UGTT is tackling the challenges facing Tunisian workers through organizing and legislative action. In partnership with allied organizations, including the Solidarity Center, UGTT is organizing rural workers in Tunisia’s long-neglected interior, where most of the 1.5 million agricultural workers are women who are not covered by social benefits like pensions and who toil in dangerous and harsh conditions, often into their seventies.
The UGTT also submitted legislation to the national parliament that would create a “solidarity economy” in which the government finances young workers, especially those in agriculture, service and handicrafts, to create their own “start-ups,” with part of the profits returning to the government to fund more new enterprises. By targeting workers in the informal economy, the program also would bring more workers into the social security system, which also is underfunded because there are now five retirees for every one worker. In the 1970s, Tahri says, the ratio was reversed.
Additionally, UGTT has reformed internal union structures to reflect women workers, who comprise the majority of workers in industries such as education, health care and auto parts manufacturing. In 2017, the UGTT Executive Board voted to require executive boards at all levels of the union to include at least two women and better represent its membership.
In 2013, the UGTT was instrumental in brokering a peaceful path to democracy as part of the Tunisian “Quartet,” which was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize.
Nov 5, 2015
Houcine Abassi, secretary general of the Tunisian General Labor Union (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, UGTT), which shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, write today in The Guardian that “awarding the Nobel Prize to an organization led by the Tunisian labor movement was a recognition of the essential and potentially transformative role of labor in all of our nations.”
“Strong unions make strong democracies,” they continue. “It sounds simplistic, but each of us have experienced this fundamental premise in our nations. As labor leaders in the United States and Tunisia respectively, we know full well that when workers come together for a voice on the job, it boosts the economy, eases social unrest and creates the conditions for peace, prosperity and the protection of rights.
To be sure, we come from very different countries, each with its own set of economic and political challenges. But we have seen the healing power of unions firsthand.”
Read their full op-ed here.
Nov 2, 2015
The Tunisian General Labor Union (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, UGTT), a longtime Solidarity Center partner, was at the forefront of the four organizations that recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said today. In a ceremony at the AFL-CIO honoring UGTT Secretary-General Houcine Abassi, Shuler praised Abassi’s courage and tenacity and called the UGTT’s work “inspirational to us in the United States.”
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler welcomed UGTT Secretary-General Houcine Abassi in a ceremony honoring his work. Credit: Solidarity Center/Kate Conradt
In his remarks, Abassi said “the Nobel Prize is not given just to us, but to all the labor movements in the world.” The award “sends a message that unions can play an equal role in government, in social dialogue … and many times can provide critical leadership.” Abassi is in Washington, D.C., this week to receive the Fairness Award presented by the Global Fairness Initiative. Solidarity Center ally Myrtle Witbooi, general secretary of the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union, is a co-recipient of the award.
In October, the Nobel Committee recognized the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet—comprised of the (UGTT); the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts; the Tunisian Human Rights League; and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers—for establishing “an alternative, peaceful political process at a time when the country was on the brink of civil war.”
Abassi described the many hours of dialogue in the months after the 2011 Arab uprising deposed longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and ushered in a period of economic and political uncertainty. As a key participant in the discussions, the UGTT succeeded in including collective bargaining rights and the right to strike in the country’s new constitution, which Tunisians approved in 2014. Through the UGTT’s efforts, the constitution also enshrines many more fundamental social and economic rights for Tunisians.
The Tunisian union movement has been in the forefront of the struggle for democracy and social equality since its formation in 1946. Following the country’s independence from colonial rule in 1956, the organization played a key role in establishing a road map for national development that made Tunisia the most advanced economy in the Arab Maghreb.
In the months after the 2011 uprising, the UGTT employed direct action when mass mobilization was needed to shore up democratic principles like women’s rights and freedom of speech, all top priorities for Tunisian unions.
“Ever since its founding, the UGTT went very much beyond the traditional role of labor unions,” pushing for freedom and democracy and inclusive participation of all civil society in governance, Abassi said.
This is the second consecutive year that worker rights activists and Solidarity Center allies have been honored with a Nobel Peace Prize. Last year Kailash Satyarthi, head of the Global March against Child Labor, shared the prize with girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai.
In 2012, the UGTT received the AFL-CIO’s 2012 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award along with the labor federation of Bahrain, the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions, for their mobilization of thousands of people in their countries to carry forward a message of social justice during the 2011 uprisings.
