Nearly 15 years after helping to dismantle authoritarianism in Tunisia, the country's most powerful labor confederation — the General Union of Tunisian Workers (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, UGTT) — is once again at the center of a battle over the nation’s political and economic future. Following a series of attacks on its headquarters, staged by alleged supporters of President Kais Saied, the UGTT mobilized thousands of its members on 21 August 2025 to protest what its leaders described as “an attack on peaceful civil society organizations” and trade union rights. In response, Saied fired back with a series of swift and punitive actions: the arrests of prominent union leaders, the withdrawal of longstanding “secondments”, and the suspension of automatic dues checkoff. These clashes mark the sharpest escalation ever in the standoff between the presidency and an institution long regarded as Tunisia’s most durable counterweight to authoritarian power.
However, while the Union has faced authoritarian governments before, what distinguishes the current conflict is not Saied’s heavy-handed tactics, but the UGTT’s diminished ability to counter them. Historically, the Union has weathered state repression thanks to its unique organizational structure, consisting of a geographically dispersed network of local unions, a tradition of internal contestation and democratic practices that anchored its legitimacy, and deep ties to its grassroots. Today, however, internal divisions raise questions about whether the UGTT can still marshal the discipline and solidarity that enabled it to confront state power in the past. Indeed, growing factionalism and a fraying democratic culture have raised doubts about the leadership’s legitimacy and made the Union more vulnerable than at any point in its modern history.
This paper traces the origins of the current confrontation, placing it within the broader context of Tunisian labor activism, and assessing whether the UGTT can still serve as an effective check on the consolidation of Saied’s authoritarian rule. It argues that unless the Union confronts the deep divisions within its own ranks — from escalating infighting to the erosion of its once-robust internal democracy — it will struggle to rally the unified resistance necessary to halt Saied’s tightening grip on power.
From Optimism to Hostility: The UGTT’s Tumultuous Relationship with Kais Saied
To understand the current standoff between President Kais Saied and the UGTT, it is important to return to 2019, when Saied was first elected to office. As a relative political outsider and former professor of constitutional law, Saied’s rise was initially welcomed by many young Tunisians and members of the working class who had grown disillusioned with partisan gridlock and chronic unemployment in the post-revolutionary period. Exit polls from the 2019 election suggest that support for Saied within the labor movement was mixed: while voters who previously aligned with Nidaa Tounes — a party with historical ties to the UGTT — leaned toward businessman Nabil Karoui, much of the middle-class, educated electorate that constitutes the UGTT’s broader base supported Saied. This ambivalence continued into the early years of his presidency. Even as Saied began consolidating unilateral power in 2021 — suspending parliament and dismissing the prime minister — the UGTT did not immediately oppose his actions. Instead, it offered cautious support, insisting that a “revision of policies and economic and social choices [was] necessary” to reverse the country’s persistent crisis, while urging the president to respect the constitutionally mandated timeline for political reform. This initial endorsement mirrored broader public approval for Saied’s rule which, according to some local polls, reached more than 85%.
However, the Union’s cautious optimism that Saied would use his power to rein in corruption and stabilize Tunisia’s fragile democracy soon gave way to disillusionment as signs of the country’s authoritarian drift became clear. Rumors that the president had negotiated an austerity plan with the International Monetary Fund quickly sparked a strong backlash from the UGTT, which staged a nationwide strike on 16 June 2022 to protest the proposed subsidy cuts and wage freezes. Shortly thereafter, Saied unveiled a new constitution that confirmed his critics’ worst fears: rather than restoring democratic order, he sought to entrench a one-man rule. Drafted without consultation with key stakeholders, the 2022 Constitution dismantled the system of checks and balances established in 2014, concentrating sweeping authority in the presidency while weakening parliament and the judiciary.
For the UGTT, which built its post-2011 reputation on defending democratic compromise, the reforms represented a betrayal of the hard-won victories it had achieved in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution. Although the UGTT leadership refrained from formally instructing its members to boycott the referendum so as not to fracture its politically heterogeneous base, it later condemned the regime’s direction, denouncing its authoritarian maneuvers. As UGTT Secretary-General Noureddine Taboubi commented in December 2022: “[The UGTT] no longer accept[s] the current path because of its ambiguity and individual rule, and the unpleasant surprises it hides for the fate of the country and democracy.”
In the years since the adoption of the new constitution, the UGTT’s relationship with the Saied regime has oscillated between uneasy restraint and open confrontation. At times, the Union has perceived Saied as a tactical ally — particularly in his clashes with Ennahdha, a longstanding rival of the UGTT. Yet, these brief convergences have been overshadowed by rising hostility, as the Union has also spearheaded some of the largest demonstrations against Saied’s tightening grip on power, including a 3,000-person protest in 2023 over the arrest of 20 opposition figures. Saied, for his part, has responded with an escalating crackdown designed to discredit and isolate the Union. Over the past two years, his government has invoked cybercrime laws to prosecute journalists and human rights activists, accused the UGTT of serving foreign interests, and floated corruption allegations against senior union leaders — all part of a broader effort to delegitimize the Union in the eyes of Tunisians.
At the same time, Saied has systematically excluded the Union from key economic decisions, seeking to erode the influence of what was once the country’s foremost social partner. This exclusion aligns seamlessly with the broader logic of his populist project: to cast himself as the sole defender of an imperiled nation while marginalizing any institution capable of mounting resistance. The tripartite negotiations, which, for decades, formed the backbone of Tunisia’s social contract — linking the state, employers, and labor — have repeatedly been suspended, fueling frustration across both the public and private sectors. Moreover, the unilateral adoption of policies typically negotiated with the Union’s input, such as adjustments to the Guaranteed Interprofessional Minimum Wage (SMIG) and revisions to the labor code, has further underscored the government’s growing hostility toward the UGTT. In response, the Union has pushed back, most notably through a three-day national transportation strike in July 2025, which drew fierce criticism from Saied and allegedly prompted the 7 August 2025 attacks on the UGTT’s headquarters.
A Legacy of Defiance: The UGTT’s History of Labor Opposition
This confrontation marks a dangerous return to earlier periods of Tunisian history when authoritarian leaders sought to break or tame the UGTT. Since its founding in 1946, the Union has been more than a labor confederation — it has functioned as a political actor in its own right, operating as a hybrid of a workers’ organization and an opposition movement. During the struggle against French colonial rule, it played a decisive role in the nationalist campaign, using strikes to strengthen the independence movement and pressure France to concede to Tunisian sovereignty. Later, when independence was achieved, the UGTT entered a complex relationship with the regime, walking an uneasy line between confrontation and accommodation. For example, in 1955, the Union helped to bring Habib Bourguiba to power in his struggle against Salah Ben Youssef; yet, when Bourguiba sought to curb the UGTT’s influence by dismissing its leaders and attacking its offices, its leaders responded with a nationwide strike that affirmed the Union’s role as an independent political force.
This delicate balance between accommodation and resistance persisted under Ben Ali. At the top of the Union, elements of the executive bureau were actively co-opted, frequently collaborating with the regime to demobilize militant federations or to sideline leftist organizers. Yet, this co-optation never fully penetrated the UGTT’s regional and sectoral structures, where grassroots activists preserved the Union’s capacity for resistance. It was this duality that allowed the Union to weather shifting political tides: even Ben Ali’s attempts to manipulate UGTT elections or further co-opt its leaders were met with significant internal resistance. In 2004, the UGTT nearly withheld its endorsement of Ben Ali’s fourth term due to membership opposition, and in 2005, it rejected his offer to occupy appointed seats in the newly created upper chamber of parliament designed to subordinate civil society organizations to the regime. Similarly, when protests erupted in Gafsa in 2008, pressure from the militant base compelled the leadership to abandon its initial strategy of negotiation and belatedly support workers involved in strikes.
This hybrid posture — simultaneously embedded in and resistant to the authoritarian state — became decisive for the UGTT’s fortunes in 2011. When anti-regime protests erupted in Sidi Bouzid in 2010, the UGTT’s regional and sectoral branches deployed their organizational infrastructure to transform local unrest into a revolutionary uprising. While the executive bureau engaged in formal negotiations with the regime, union militants and regional leaders expanded the protest movement to major urban centers and held a series of rolling strikes against the regime. And, when Tunisia’s fragile democracy teetered on the brink of collapse in 2013 amid partisan deadlock and political assassinations, it was the UGTT — alongside the Tunisian Bar Association, the Tunisian Human Rights League, and the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts — that brokered the National Dialogue, rescuing the country’s transition and earning the quartet the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.
Across these episodes of mobilization, the UGTT’s nationalist credentials and organizational cohesion were central to its ability to successfully oppose authoritarian rule. Before the Union’s 1978 strike against the Bourguiba regime, Secretary-General Habib Achour revitalized the UGTT’s internal bureaucracy, expanding opportunities for rank-and-file participation and presiding over the first union congress free from government intervention since independence. Additionally, when Ben Ali began attacking the Union’s legitimacy in the early 2000s, the UGTT launched a bureaucratic process of redressement aimed at increasing transparency, limiting executive power, and decentralizing decision-making by granting regional branches greater autonomy. In the immediate post-revolution era, the confederation’s commitment to internal democracy was reaffirmed through reforms that upheld term limits and abolished the ten-day strike authorization requirement — measures designed to strengthen the influence of ordinary members vis-à-vis labor elites.
Challenges to Continued Opposition
Today, however, the UGTT’s capacity for effective political resistance has been constrained by its internal struggles. Within the Union, traditionally militant federations (i.e., the education, health, and banking sectors) coexist alongside a small pro-Saied contingent and an apolitical wing that prefers to avoid political opposition in favor of a greater focus on economic concerns. These divisions complicate collective action, forcing the leadership to balance the preservation of political influence with the need to maintain internal unity. This balancing act has shaped several of the UGTT’s strategic decisions in recent years — including its refusal to issue an official boycott of the 2022 constitutional referendum — and, until recently, has manifested in a lackluster response to the Saied regime’s worst excesses, even when the Union does decide to take its opposition to the streets.
Meanwhile, the UGTT’s own democratic credentials have foundered, giving unexpected resonance to many of Saied’s vitriolic critiques. For example, the repeal of existing term limits on executives at the Union's 2021 Sousse Congress has triggered accusations of creeping centralization under Secretary-General Noureddine Taboubi, with some members accusing Taboubi of trying to "monopolize the [UGTT]’s leadership.” These changes deepened divisions within the executive bureau itself, pitting five members — Anouar Ben Kaddour, Monem Amira, Othman Jallouli, Slaheddine Selmi, and Taher Mezzi — against the remaining 10, many of whom would have been subject to the original term-limit provisions. Subsequent efforts by a faction of the executive bureau to delay the upcoming national congress have deepened fractures within the membership and raised concerns that the Union is reproducing some of the same authoritarian tendencies it has traditionally opposed. Such controversies have allowed Saied to depict the UGTT’s leaders as a self-serving elite rather than a genuine representative of the Tunisian working class.
Figure 1: Trust in selected Tunisian institutions, 2024 (Arab Barometer)
Importantly, in a political environment marked by disillusionment and economic despair, this narrative has found fertile terrain. Public confidence in civil society organizations across Tunisia remains low. As data from the Arab Barometer shows (Figure 1), strong majorities view organized groups — including parties, NGOs, and unions — as less trustworthy than key pillars of the Saied regime (i.e., the president, police, and army). In his recent attacks against the UGTT, Saied has leveraged this sentiment to accuse the Union’s leadership of “squandering taxpayer money” with repeated strikes and to justify government investigations into its financing. Indeed, protesters outside the Union’s headquarters on 7 August echoed these concerns almost verbatim, denouncing “union corruption” and accusing leaders of hoarding privilege while ordinary Tunisians suffer.
Finally, compounding the Union’s troubles has been the rise of rival labor organizations since the 2011 revolution, most notably the Union of Tunisian Workers (UTT, Union des Travailleurs Tunisiens). Led by former UGTT Secretary-General Ismail Sahbani, the UTT has faced its own accusations of corruption, but its existence has provided Saied with a convenient opportunity to divide and weaken the labor movement. In moves reminiscent of his authoritarian predecessors, the government has revoked exclusive secondments for UGTT leaders and threatened to rescind the automatic withdrawal of membership fees from public-sector salaries — steps that could eventually erode the UGTT’s financial base and open space for competitors like the UTT to poach disaffected members.
Conclusion
Ultimately, whether the UGTT can overcome its current challenges and prevail in its confrontation against Kais Saied hinges on two key factors: its ability to restore its internal democracy and its capacity to reconnect with ordinary Tunisians. The Union’s historical advantages remain significant. Its legacy continues to command legitimacy — the UGTT is woven into Tunisia’s national history of independence and democracy in ways that no other actor can attempt to replicate. It also remains the only institution capable of forcing the Saied administration to yield, as demonstrated by the recent transportation strike that brought thousands into the streets and shuttered large portions of the economy. On the international stage, the UGTT continues to benefit from extensive networks that can amplify pressure on the government and complicate Saied’s image abroad.
Yet the obstacles the UGTT faces are profound. The institutional landscape that once allowed it to peacefully mediate political crises — as it did in 2014 — has all but disappeared. Kais Saied has dismantled most independent checks on his power, the parliament is weak, and the opposition is hopelessly fragmented. Meanwhile, soaring inflation, persistent unemployment, and effective repression campaigns have drained public energy for protest, even among the Union’s most loyal supporters. In such conditions of widespread apathy and economic hardship, sustained collective mobilization is increasingly difficult to achieve.
In the long arc of Tunisia’s modern history, the UGTT has faced down autocrats before — and won. It survived Bourguiba’s paternalism, withstood Ben Ali’s repression, and steered the country through a revolutionary transition that many feared would implode. Today’s confrontation thus carries a familiar ring: once again, a would-be strongman is attempting to consolidate power by attacking the UGTT. But, unlike his predecessors, Saied wields a potent new weapon — popular frustration. He has convinced many Tunisians that the country’s institutions have failed them, and that centralized rule offers the only cure for dysfunction. According to the latest results from the Arab Barometer, 77% of Tunisians continue to have quite a lot or a great deal of trust in Saied, while concerns about the same issues that brought him to power —persistent unemployment, high cost of living, and political instability — remain at an all-time high.
Left unchallenged, that narrative could render the UGTT’s resistance impotent. Still, Tunisia’s history offers an important antidote. When the country’s rulers sought to erode the UGTT’s legitimacy, the Union has often responded with renewed vigor and solidarity. If the UGTT’s leaders can successfully reenergize its base and frame its struggle not merely as a fight for wages but as a defense of Tunisia’s democratic future, it may yet reclaim its historical role at the vanguard of political opposition. However, should the Union proceed on its current path of democratic decline, the country may lose its final line of defense against a dangerous return to autocratic rule.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
