 While Tunisia has committed to democratic reforms, workers still face obstacles to realizing their full rights. Particularly the freedoms of association and expression are routinely violated in Tunisia. Journalists are frequently jailed for defamation and the Union of Tunisian Journalists (SJT) is considered illegal and has not been allowed to hold its first congress. Its members face harassment from the police and are forbidden from working by the Ministry of the Interior. All media is subject to censorship and is strictly controlled.
Workers in Tunisia are also facing the challenge of globalization and increased privatization, as are their neighbors throughout North Africa. Tunisia has been affected by the termination of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement in January 2005 that guaranteed export quotas and has resulted in the garment industry multinationals leaving North Africa for cheaper labor markets. Tunisia’s garment industry at the time represented 47% of its exports and 250,000 jobs. Workers in Tunisia have come to accept privatization as a reality and are focusing on how to adapt to these changes and still protect workers rights rather than try to stop privatization.
The Solidarity Center began its program in cooperation with the UGTT to assist workers and the union in adapting to the new economy, Strengthening Labor in the Arab Maghreb, from April 2005 until June 2006. Activities with the Union Générale Tunisienne de Travail (UGTT), included organizing workshops for shop stewards in the tourism and agriculture sectors as well as a seminar on union and civil society relations. The Trade Union Strengthening department of the Solidarity Center also held a workshop for the North African sub region on the textile and garment sector after the multi-fiber arrangement.
The Solidarity Center continued to work with the UGTT under its program Strengthening Labor to Respond to Economic Change from June 2006 through March 2007. To continue to assist Tunisian workers in the textile sector, the Solidarity Center held a workshop to train rank and file workers in leadership skills and collective bargaining at the enterprise level. The Solidarity Center is also sponsoring the development of a database that will contain information regarding membership as well as labor disputes and their outcomes. Union leaders will not be dependent solely on government sources of information when tabling national debates and developing action plans for socio-economic change, as the database will provide them with easily accessible information for identifying trends that will determine the union’s role in the new economic environment. To assist workers and unions in adapting to the privatized economy, the Solidarity Center held a workshop on the effects of privatization on unionization for 200 participants to discuss how privatization has affected working conditions and their right to organize and to generate recommendations in preparation for the UGTT Congress.
The Solidarity Center began partnering with the independent Union of Tunisian Journalists (SJT) under a separate program, Advocating for an Independent and Representative Journalists’ Association. The purpose of this program is to assist the SJT in obtaining government recognition and exercising their freedoms of expression and association. The program began with a strategic planning workshop where the SJT determined its goals and plan of action for accomplishing those goals. Planned activities include making a formal complaint to the ILO, regional roundtable workshops with journalists from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Yemen, and a public awareness campaign with leaflets to explain the existence of the SJT and the difficulties its members have faced.
The Union Générale Tunisienne de Travail (UGTT) is the sole national federation in Tunisia. About 15 % of the country’s workers are members with an even larger percentage covered by union contracts. The UGTT has been a champion of efforts against sexual harassment. The UGTT has also created a well-developed education department. The UGTT has a longstanding history with the independence movement of Tunisia that led to the country’s emancipation. Although the UGTT and its member unions are independent, they are subject to government pressure by the provision of state subsidies.
The Syndicat des Journalistes Tunisiens (SJT) is an independent, unaffiliated association of journalists founded in May 2004. Its president, Lotfi Hajji, was the Tunis correspondent of Al-Jazeera before being barred from exercising these duties at the time of the creation of the union. Despite being declared illegal by Tunisian authorities, the SJT is an associate member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). The SJT claims over 180 journalists as members.
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