Tunisia's celebrated labour union holding the country back

The economy of Tunisia is creeping, week by week, towards collapse. Growth is virtually nil, unemployment remains high, and the currency continues to sink. The most recent ill omen was the announcement that Tunisia";s government has asked for postponement of a debt payment it owes to Qatar. All this has experts talking about a potential default in 2017.

There";s more than enough to blame to go around. A corrupt and nepotistic elite, a still-sluggish Eurozone on which the country";s export sector is nearly entirely dependent, and a series of terror attacks that have crippled its tourism industry, a vital source of foreign currency, are all lead weights on the prow of the economy.

But there";s an economic albatross that few outside the country wish to address: Tunisia";s economy is also being pulled down by a bloated, lethargic civil service that has been faithfully defended by the Nobel-crowned labor union, the General Tunisian Labour Union (better known by its French acronym, UGTT). The army of functionaries, including employees of public utilities and mining companies, teachers, and municipal employees, reached nearly 800,000 in 2014, and this in a country with a total labor force of just over four million.

The UGTT";s role has long been larger than simply advocating for workers. It was an integral part of Tunisia";s anti-colonial independence movement in the 1950s, and as the only authorised labor union in post-independence Tunisia, it has at different times been a key ally and a bitter rival of the country";s dictatorial governments. In 2011, it helped organize protests during the uprising against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali";s regime, and its star reached its apogee with the Nobel Peace Prize it received in 2015 for its part helping negotiate an end to a simmering political crisis within Tunisia";s fragile new democratic government. This outsized importance has given the UGTT a political and economic heft that it may not entirely know how to wield.

'[It";s] an organization that is very aware of its historical role. They think that they built Tunisia, so [the Nobel] gives them a sense of their role, but it";s a bit paralyzing, probably,” said Franck Bissette, who helped manage a World Bank grant to the UGTT.

Since the revolution, the union has burdened the Tunisian economy with general strikes in key sectors like the phosphate industry and the health sector and bargained for across-the-board wage hikes for government workers that have distended the public debt and fueled inflation. Public sector debt has gone from 40 percent before the revolution to 52 percent last year. This wouldn";t necessarily be a problem if the money were being invested in things like roads and equipment, but thanks to the union";s efforts, more and more (nearly half of the budget last year) is going to wages and less and less to capital expenditure. The government has been saved so far by the decline in oil prices, which has reduced the burden of fuel subsidies, but if those prices rise again — as they are predicted to do next year — it could pose serious problems for Tunisia";s ability to service its debt.

On top of demands for more jobs and higher wages, the UGTT has also shown a willingness to use strikes as a political weapon. The union";s largest-scale recent strike, a general strike of the postal service, was exemplary of the aggressive strategy it has been pursuing.

According to the union, the strike started in response to the jailing of a postal employee in the southern city of Tozeur after he refused to hand over documents to an agent of the local court who had failed to properly identify himself.

There may well be a legitimate grievance concerning the sudden, summary manner of the postal worker";s arrest. But was it worth stopping the functioning of the country";s entire postal service? Slowing down mail delivery for a few days is damaging enough for an economy, but in Tunisia, the post also has other functions. Many of the country";s poorest keep their money in accounts at the post office rather than in banks. Because of the strike, these people were cut off from their retirement payments and remittances. This bellicose, politicized approach has struck some Tunisians as counterproductive.

'There are different means of protesting. You can wear a red badge to tell people you";re angry, you can stop working for half an hour, for example, and get back to work,” said Mouheb Garoui, the executive director and co-founder of iWatch, a non-profit government and private sector watchdog.

'We";re having a crisis and it";s a decay in people";s work ethic, especially after the revolution. Before the revolution you hardly heard of a strike in public service. Maybe it happens twice a year, three times a year, that";s it. Now it";s every day,” he went on.

Absenteeism is at its worst in Tunisia in the dog days of summer, when public sector workers are granted special shortened hours — up until early afternoon, but no later. With Ramadan and its daylong fasts falling in summer this year, even those hours seem to be too much for some civil servants.

'We all know that administrations, they close earlier than they are supposed to, they open later than they are supposed to. You go to the administration and its open but there";s no one there,” said Garoui.

This summer, iWatch has launched a campaign to send volunteers to see whether public service administrations actually stayed open until the reduced summer hours they advertised. The organization has not yet published its results, but the campaign has already raised the hackles of public servants. One professional organization, a union of graduates of the country";s most prestigious public service school, actually staged its own protest against the group. In a press release announcing the protest, it deplored civil society 'interference” and called on its members to refuse to work with iWatch.

Foreign Policy