Inside Africa: Tunisia's UGTT and the Crisis of the Last Independent Institution
Tunisia's most powerful labor union called for a nationwide general strike on January 21, 2026 — the first since President Kais Saied seized sweeping powers in July 2021 — only to postpone it amid crippling internal fractures. The Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT), representing roughly one million workers and co-winner of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for brokering post-revolution compromise, had intended the action to paralyze public services and force the government back to the negotiating table. Instead, the strike's postponement exposed a union fighting on two fronts simultaneously, against an increasingly authoritarian president and against its own leadership crisis.
The UGTT predates Tunisian independence. Founded in 1946 by Farhat Hached alongside the nationalist movement that would oust French colonial rule, the union has shaped the country's labor traditions and political culture for eight decades. During the 2011 Arab Spring, the UGTT's decision to join the revolution proved pivotal: its general strike in Sfax on January 12 was among the largest protests of the campaign. When the democratic transition stalled in 2013 amid political assassinations and social unrest, the UGTT joined three other civil society organizations to form the National Dialogue Quartet, which the Norwegian Nobel Committee credited with "its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia".
Initially, the UGTT did not oppose Saied's 2021 power grab, in which he suspended parliament and began governing by decree. That tolerance faded as Saied moved systematically against intermediary institutions. He dissolved the High Judicial Council in February 2022, replacing judges with loyalists. He imprisoned leaders of all major political parties, including Rached Ghannouchi of Ennahda and Abir Moussi of the Free Destourian Party. Furthermore, Saied introduced Decree 2022-54, criminalizing the dissemination of what the regime deems "fake news," and effectively shut down independent oversight of the October 2024 presidential election, in which he claimed 90.69% of the vote on a turnout of just 28.8%.
Following a three-day national transport strike from July 30 to August 1, 2025, the government suspended all negotiation and conciliation sessions with union structures across all sectors and regions, according to Taher Barbari, a member of the UGTT's executive bureau. On August 7, 2025, pro-government demonstrators attacked UGTT headquarters in central Tunis, demanding the organization's dissolution—an unprecedented physical assault on the union building. Saied publicly defended the attackers while denying their intent had been violent, and alluded to opening investigations into the union's leadership. Days later, Prime Minister Sarra Zenzri issued a circular ending the secondment of trade unionists from the civil service, widely seen as an attempt to weaken organized labor's institutional presence within public administration.
The UGTT's assistant secretary-general for the private sector, Taher Mezzi, told Nawaat, Tunisia's leading independent digital media outlet, that the government's decision to suspend negotiations was "unconstitutional and in violation of international conventions ratified by Tunisia," adding that the aim was "not only to marginalize the UGTT but in fact to eliminate it". The pressure extended beyond the public sector. Employer representatives in banking, insurance, and financial institutions withdrew from concluded wage agreements after what union sources described as government intervention, despite having already signed amendments for wage increases.
Economic distress provided both context and constraint. The Tunisian economy grew by just 1.4% in 2024 after zero growth in 2023, according to the World Bank, diverging from its North African neighbors as its GDP still below pre-COVID levels. Public debt was projected to reach approximately TND 147.5 billion ($50 billion) by the end of 2025, accounting for roughly 81% of GDP, according to Tunisia's Ministry of Finance. Inflation, while declining from a peak of 10.4% in February 2023, remained at 5.2% in August 2025. IMF bailout talks have stalled over subsidy reforms that Saied has refused to implement. Youth unemployment stood at 38.1%, down marginally from pandemic-era peaks but still among Africa's highest.
Against this backdrop, the UGTT's National Administrative Commission set January 21 as the strike date, preceded by worker rallies to mobilize support. The action was framed as defense against exclusion from wage and pension negotiations, a traditional union role the government had systematically sidelined. The strike threatened to disrupt essential public services and further strain a government already facing acute financial pressure.
Internal fractures intervened. On December 23, 2025, Secretary-General Noureddine Taboubi announced his resignation, creating what the EU-funded civil society monitor EU SEE described as "considerable uncertainty" at a moment when the union was preparing for both the strike and its upcoming congress. The resignation reflected factional disputes; a group within the Administrative Council, dubbed the "group of four", had been pressuring to advance the congress date and challenge Taboubi's leadership appointments. After several weeks of internal negotiations and appeals from union leaders, Taboubi withdrew his resignation on January 14, 2026 and officially resumed his duties, a decision the EU SEE report attributed to a desire to "preserve the stability of the organisation and avoid a leadership vacuum at a critical moment". The January 21 strike did not proceed as planned. On January 23, the deputy secretary-general indicated that the strike's future would be determined at the national congress, scheduled for March 25-27.
Failure to unify ahead of the March congress would embolden Saied to further curtail the union's influence, including private-sector bargaining power. The analysis reflects a broader institutional dilemma. Repeated postponements erode credibility among rank-and-file workers facing daily economic hardship, yet premature action without internal cohesion risks an ineffective strike that validates government dismissals of the union's relevance. Carnegie Endowment analyst Hamza Meddeb observed that the UGTT "has always been more than just a trade union"—a political force predating modern Tunisia that Saied cannot simply ignore but increasingly seeks to neutralize.
The military, once apolitical, has been drawn into governance through expanded ministerial roles, public works mandates, and officer promotions. Civil society organizations beyond the UGTT face similar constraints. Licensing new political parties is effectively impossible under current repressive conditions, and Saied's alignment with China and Russia offers economic lifelines that bypass Western democratic conditionality.
The UGTT's March congress will determine whether the organization can renew its leadership, resolve factional disputes, and reschedule collective action, or whether internal paralysis accelerates the erosion of Tunisia's last independent mass institution. For a country that the Norwegian Nobel Committee once held up as proof that "civil society institutions and organizations can play a crucial role in a country's democratization," the stakes extend well beyond wage negotiations. They reach the question of whether organized labor, with deep nationalist legitimacy and eight decades of institutional memory, retains the capacity to check executive power when courts, parliament, media, and political parties have already been brought to heel.
