Tunisian Labor Union’s Congress Begins: What Shape Will Tunisia’s New Labor Movement Take?

Ahmed Ellali | 25 December 2011 | 2 Comments

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Today, December 25^th, the Tunisian General Union (UGTT) inaugurates its 22^nd Congress.

The event commences at 4 pm at the “Dar Ismaiel” hotel in Tabarka, in the Governorate of Jendouba and will continue until Wednesday, December 28th with the decision making session of votes for the Union leadership.

The five year-term of the UGTT’s current leadership committee is about to end and now new elections will be held to select new leaders. This occasion held, under the slogan “Oh people, I love you,” will be especially significant in determining the long term orientation of Tunisia’s labor union. It is common knowledge in Tunisia that the Union’s current leadership was handpicked by the former regime leading to wide accusations of distrust and a lack of public confidence in the current leadership.

The current Congress will play a decisive role in re-branding the Union’s image in post-revolution Tunisia.

This Congress will focus on three primary missions which are: reviewing the financial state of the union and the report of the outgoing finance committee, reviewing the bylaws of the Union for the coming five years and lastly the election of the executive bureau which will embark on fixing all the internal procedures for the Union in the coming five years.

Lamjed Jamli, a UGTT coordinator working with private sector employees pointed out the importance of the Congress, “I believe that this event is the second most important political event in Tunisia coming after the elections of the Constituent Assembly held in October, it is an ordinary event because it is always scheduled every five years but extraordinary in the current context because it is the first such conference after the revolution. So the big question we are asking now is, How can the UGTT contribute to complete the objectives of the revolution?”

Political activists of the UGTT will provide a draft constitution for the Constituent Assembly to review all legislation ratified by the deposed regime considered harmful to working people. “We need to integrate the union culture in the constitution,” said Jamli. UGTT members are studying methods to end brokerage in the workforce by abolishing the “contracting out system” in the private sector, the practice has already been abolished in the public sector.

Women are represented in the Congress by “Femmes Democrates” or the “Tunisian Association for Democratic Women.” According to Ahlam Belhaj, the head of the association, gender equality will be among the primary demands of Femmes Democrates at the Congress, “We want the UGTT to integrate women’s rights in their draft constitution that will be presented to the Constituent Assembly. It must take into consideration the hardships of housing, working payments and poverty that women are facing as well as the glass ceiling which deprives women from being promoted.”

Jamli has expressed the Union’s determination to ensure women’s voices will be heard. “We will not let women down,” he said when asked about the Union’s plans to incorporate women’s demands.

The decision makers in the UGTT have the power to influence the amount of labor disputes in the country. Over the past ten months there have been over 350 labor disputes that were unresolved long enough to lead to strikes and other work stoppages.

The new government has proposed a truce with the UGTT in postponing work stoppages for six months, in order to give the economy time to recover. In a recent speech to the membership of UTICA, the association of business leaders, President Moncef Marzouki called the large number of work stoppages “national suicide” and “stabbing the country in the back.”

The new leadership of the UGTT will redesign the strategies of their organization in order to better adapt to new government policies and changing public sympathy with the plight of working people. It will be critical for the new UGTT leadership to manage the paradox between preserving economic stability and at the same time giving union members the right to strike when they have unresolved labor disputes.

While the UGTT played a critical role in the Tunisian decolonization movement in the 1950′s and subsequently the rank and file of the Union played a decisive role in turning the tide against Zine El Abiddine Ben Ali’s regime in the last days of the Revolution, during the period of Ben Ali’s regime the UGTT played a marginalized role in Tunisian society due to the Ben Ali regime’s neutralization of the organization by manipulating it’s leadership during his reign.

Sadok Ayari contributed to this report