Tunisia's powerful UGTT union faces existential battle as government dismantles civil society groups

An estimated 100,000 people took to the streets of Gabès on October 21, answering a call from the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) to demand environmental justice. The march was not only a protest against pollution from the local chemical complex, but also a reminder that the UGTT can still bring people out in force despite growing state pressure.

Within weeks, the same organisational capacity produced a two-day strike that shut down banks and financial institutions across Tunisia in early November. ATMs went offline, branches closed, and thousands of workers gathered in Tunis's Place Mohamed Ali demanding higher wages.

Observers say that the government’s response has largely ignored environmental grievances and wage demands. Instead, it has systematically moved to weaken the institutional framework that has historically enabled such civil pressure.

Several prominent Tunisian associations were caught off guard in October by official orders suspending their activities for at least a month. Among them were the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) and the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD), both known for defending marginalised communities, women's rights, and refugee protections. These suspensions followed a series of state investigations into NGOs accused of receiving suspicious foreign funding earlier in October.

Once considered a political "red line" because of its historic role in the country's democratic transition, the UGTT is also under pressure amid President Kais Saied's broader campaign for "accountability without exceptions."

Officials and pro-government commentators have suggested that the UGTT could be next. Still, the union has rejected what it describes as "baseless accusations," emphasising that while it is not above the law, it opposes politically motivated targeting.

For a country once hailed as the sole democratic success of the 2011 regional uprisings, the transformation marks what experts describe as a return to pre-revolutionary governance—a move from a system built on social dialogue and intermediary institutions to one in which the state claims to represent "the people" directly, rendering unions, associations, and civil society obsolete.

From dialogue to decree

The 2026 draft finance law reflects a significant shift in Tunisia's approach to wage-setting. For decades, wages were determined through collective bargaining between the government, the UGTT, and employer unions, as part of the country's traditional tripartite negotiations on fiscal and social policies, which also involved the Ministry of Social Affairs and employers' organisations like UTICA. The draft law would end that process entirely, giving the government the power to set wage increases in both the public and private sectors by executive decree for the next three years, signalling a significant departure from long-standing negotiation practices.

The project contained several shortcomings: although it raised social slogans, it neutralised and excluded the Tunisian General Labour Union and all social and economic parties and civil society, and it put in place texts and clauses that lacked dialogue and participation, amid great secrecy.

"This is not simply a technocratic measure," says Sabri Zghidi, a journalist at Echaab, the UGTT's official newspaper. "It cancels the principle of collective bargaining itself, something guaranteed by the Tunisian constitution, labour code, and international conventions the state has ratified."

The shift followed a series of escalating measures. In August, pro-government demonstrators gathered outside UGTT headquarters, demanding leadership changes, a protest that President Kais Saied publicly defended, saying participants "had no intention of attacking or breaking into the building."

Days later, Prime Minister Sarra Zenzri issued a circular ending the secondment of trade unionists from the civil service, a move widely seen as an attempt to weaken organised labour's institutional presence within public administration. The circular ends the practice of assigning government and public institution employees to work for trade unions, requiring those seconded to return immediately to their original workplaces.

"It was the first alarm of an open and direct war," Zghidi explains. "It meant that dialogue no longer happens where conflict occurs. Everything had to be filtered through the Presidency."

Since then, union representatives across sectors, according to Sabri, report increased disciplinary measures, suspensions, and criminal cases tied to workplace disputes.

"We are witnessing the restriction of the right to organise and the prosecution of unionists for defending their colleagues," he adds. "This is no longer a disagreement over economic policy. It is the opening of a conflict over the very existence of social negotiation."

The pattern extends beyond the UGTT. In recent months, authorities have dissolved 47 associations and frozen the assets of 36 more since the launch of the current accountability campaign.

Most recently, the UGTT warned against efforts to exclude its representatives from the boards of social security funds, institutions the union helped establish and has historically co-managed with the state. Sabri described any such exclusion as contradicting "the spirit of participatory governance" and vowed it would "not stand idly by in the face of attempts to undermine the achievements of the working class."

Assault on intermediary bodies

Anas Kaddoussi, a lawyer and legal expert who has closely followed the cases, describes the current approach as a shift "from regulatory oversight to restrictive administration."

He notes that the first phase involved criminal prosecutions against members of associations under charges linked to money laundering and currency exchange violations.

"These charges are based on the existence of foreign grants. But foreign funding is lawful under Decree 88, provided the association declares it, keeps proper accounting records, and undergoes annual audit," Kaddoussi explains. "The only prohibited funding is from entities linked to states with no diplomatic relations with Tunisia. So the question is not legality of funding, but how the law is being interpreted and enforced."

The second phase involved administrative warnings issued by the government requesting "regularisation." Many organisations responded within legal deadlines.

"In a number of cases, associations submitted documentation proving compliance, but did not receive a formal reply," Kaddoussi tells The New Arab. "Despite this, the government proceeded to request a temporary suspension of activities before the court. This means that the suspension was applied without evaluating the responses, which contradicts the procedural sequence required under Decree 88."

He emphasises that Article 45 of Decree 88 allows suspension only as an exceptional measure, for a maximum of 30 days. But the suspensions have been applied "in a blanket manner, including against associations providing essential direct services, including shelters, legal aid, and psychological support.”

“When suspension is applied without assessing whether the organisation corrected the alleged irregularity, it becomes a measure of disruption rather than compliance."

The government has justified these measures as necessary to scrutinise sources of foreign funding, with Saied claiming that "some associations received money from abroad under the cover of humanitarian work to launder money and influence national decision-making."

But Hichem Ajbouni, a political and economic analyst and member of the Democratic Current party, sees a deeper pattern.

"Civil society became the object of a defamation campaign, amplified by pro-presidential networks portraying organisations, journalists, judges, and political opponents as 'traitors' serving foreign agendas," he says. "The same pattern was used when the Supreme Judicial Council was dissolved. It is a method of governing through suspicion."

Ajbouni points to what he calls "the paradox": the state itself receives support from the same international donors and now questions the legitimacy of civil society organisations.

"The issue is therefore not financial transparency but the role that civil society plays as an independent actor in shaping public debate," he argues. "The current campaign targets not irregularities but the ability of associations to function as counterweights."

The end of social mediation

The UGTT is not simply another civil society organisation facing pressure. Since independence, the union has served as a stabilising mechanism and negotiator of social compromise. It played a decisive role in the anti-colonial struggle, helped defuse the 1984 bread riots, and was central to the National Dialogue Quartet that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 for steering Tunisia through a political crisis.

"The UGTT has always been a backbone of Tunisian civil society," Ajbouni says. "It is not only a union. It is one of the key mechanisms through which society speaks to the state."

What distinguishes the current moment, he argues, is that the state no longer accepts the need for such mechanisms.

"We are faced with a system that rejects intermediaries entirely. Parties, unions, and associations are all being sidelined. The message is that the state speaks directly to the people, without institutions in between."

This framing aligns with President Saied's rhetoric since 2019, centred on "direct popular representation" and the replacement of organised negotiation with what he describes as "the general will of the people."

For many unionists, the implications are existential. If wages, employment conditions, and social benefits are no longer negotiated through the union, what remains of its institutional role?

The confrontation comes as the UGTT also faces internal disputes, particularly over a controversial rule change that extended mandates within the executive bureau, fracturing internal cohesion.

"That internal crisis weakened the union at the exact moment when the state began to advance against intermediary bodies," Ajbouni tells TNA. "Power does not confront strong institutions. It waits for their moment of vulnerability."

Yet the Gabès and banking sector strikes demonstrate that the union's organisational capacity remains intact. The question is whether fragmented internal factions will converge around what increasingly looks like a struggle over institutional survival.

Tunisia's Social Observatory reported that protest activities doubled in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2023 and 2024, with 1,316 protests recorded. More than 55 per cent were professional actions demanding job security, wage payments, and better working conditions. Workers and employees conducted 403 protest actions, making them the largest group.

"We extend our hand to dialogue," Zghidi says. "But if the right to negotiate is removed, we will defend the organisation and the social rights it represents. This is not only about unionists. It concerns all workers whose living conditions are deteriorating."

Ajbouni sees the stakes as existential for Tunisia's political order.

"We have returned not to the Tunisia before the revolution, but to a Tunisia before politics, where power is exercised without negotiation, and disagreement is treated as suspicion. A society cannot function that way for long."

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.