Organization and organizing in revolutionary times: The case of Tunisian General Labor Union

Abstract

Adopting Barker’s (2011) Marxist approach of a social movement “as a whole”, this article addresses the question of whether and how mass-membership movement organizations can break out of oligarchic authority and support a radical political protest movement. Using an ethnographic approach, this article explores how the UGTT (the Tunisian General Labor Union) responded to organizational challenges during the Tunisian popular uprising in 2010 by examining its intra-organizational processes as well as its interactions with other parts of the protest movement and how their struggles mutually aided the fall of Ben Ali’s regime. The findings highlight that two correlated aspects were critical to a radical transformation of UGTT’s conservative goal. First, unionists with activism experience outside the labor organization played a key role as “mediators,” deriving meaning from the organizational culture of the union to interpret the course of the event, supporting the popular uprising, and forcing the union leadership to join the revolutionary process. Second, the unpredictable and unprecedented regime repression radicalized the protest movement and its claims, and ruptured the union’s traditional bureaucracy. The article concludes by elaborating on the potential of organizational studies to help us understand the role of trade unions in protest movement organizing and, more broadly, the role of formal mass-membership organizations in social movements.

Mobilizing within and beyond the Labor Union: A Case of Precarious Workers’ Collective Actions in North Africa

“…Several studies have examined how the UGTT contributed to the 2010–2011 Uprising (Yousfi 2021) and the following democratization process (Beinin 2016). Yet, relatively scant attention has been paid to the dynamic relationship between the union and precarious workers’ collective actions and struggle over job securities.…”

“…One cannot fully understand the trajectory of site workers’ mobilizing strategies and repertoires of action without taking into account their interactions with the UGTT, the powerful national organization for workers. Established a decade earlier than the independence of Tunisia in 1956, the UGTT played a crucial role in struggles against both colonialism and the post-independence authoritarian regime (Ayubi 1995: 211; Alexander 2000: 466; Allinson 2015: 302; Netterstrøm 2016: 386; Yousfi 2021: 6). Although the union’s main function has been to defend members’ material interests, it has also intervened in political and socioeconomic issues and acted as the representative of civil society.…”

Juventud, organización y estrategias de resistencia frente a la precariedad laboral

“…Por su parte, Davidson (2012) señala que los énfasis de Foucault en las tácticas de resistencia y de contraconducta no corresponden con una contraparte pasiva o una suerte de efecto rezagado, sino que la productividad de la contraconducta va más allá del acto puramente negativo de la desobediencia. En esta línea, y siguiendo a Lorey (2016), se pueden entender las formas de resistencia o contraconducta a partir de nuevas expresiones de movilización traducidas en la protesta social y en el activismo que se mantienen actualmente en luchas sociales, así como protestas a nivel global (Antunes, 2019;Pleyers, 2018;Yousfi, 2021). En un sentido más amplio, y tal como señala De Certeau (1984), también corresponden a prácticas que implican una subversión del día a día, las cuales no necesariamente son confrontacionales, sino más bien disfrazadas o invisibles (Imas & Weston, 2016).…”

“…En efecto, la instancia de los encuentros internacionales resultaría ser un medio favorable para promover transformaciones en las relaciones entre los trabajadores y las corporaciones de comida rápida, dada la similitud en cuanto a las experiencias compartidas a nivel regional. Así, en este primer encuentro internacional se visualiza una movilización por parte de los trabajadores del rubro, quienes en respuesta ante la precariedad laboral se manifiestan mediante prácticas emancipatorias (Melges et al, 2022;Yousfi, 2021). De esta forma, la organización de los trabajadores de la comida rápida permitió fortalecer la unión colectiva ante los desafíos que conlleva el modelo neoliberal en la actualidad.…”