The Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT)  has always been a central force on the Tunisian political and social scene, but at the same time it suffers from a fundamental contradiction between its historical role as an incubator of workers’ struggles and its transformation into a calcified bureaucratic institution. The central question here is: can the union be reformed from within, or is any attempt to do so merely a reproduction of the logic of the state itself within trade unionism?

The Fundamental Contradiction: Union or Institution?

The union emerged in the context of the struggle against colonialism and subsequently established itself as a mediator between workers and the authorities in the era of the national state. However, over time, it ceased to be a mere tool of struggle and became an integral part of the state’s institutional structure, negotiating within a political and economic system that maintains the domination of capital. This is where the main contradiction emerges: a union that is supposed to represent the working class, but which is ultimately subject to the logic of the state, that is, to the logic of hierarchy, representation, and negotiation instead of direct confrontation.

Reform from Within: Possibility or Mirage?

Some believe it is possible to reform the union by restoring the spirit of struggle within it, but this idea ignores the deep structure that governs it. Just as the state cannot be reformed to become « horizontal » without losing its essence as a tool of repression, any attempt at « democracy » within the union runs up against the walls of its inherent bureaucracy, where every internal rebellion becomes a new project of containment. Any internal reform is, ultimately, a reproduction of the same model with new faces.

The Revolutionary Alternative: Overcome, Not Reform. If the problem lies in the structure itself, the solution cannot be a patchwork, but a radical one. The alternative lies not in union reform, but in moving beyond it to forms of worker self-organization: workers’ councils, horizontal unions, structures independent of any bureaucratic representation. Revolutionary union action cannot be an official institution, but must be a dynamic movement that rejects the logic of mediation and seeks to create a genuine working-class force outside the framework of the state and the market. Towards a New Horizon for Union Action The insistence of some on wanting to reform the Tunisian General Labor Union amounts to wanting to reform the state itself from within: an illusion that drags the workers’ struggle into the quagmire of formal reforms. The alternative is not to recycle the same bureaucratic mechanisms, but to build independent structures of struggle based on direct democracy and collective action.

Transcendence, not reform, is the only path to truly freeing workers from the constraints of bureaucracy and the logic of the state.

NC (Tunisia)

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From the newsletter Espoir (Hope) / Al Amal, #2, 2025 March – April

Table of contents :

Statement of the Anarchist Group of Sudan (22d of february, 2025)

https://cnt-ait.info/?p=12543

News from the Anarchist group of Sudan (early April)

Tunisian General Labor Union UGTT : Reform from Within, Possibility or Mirage ?

https://cnt-ait.info/2025/04/15/ugtt-reform

El-Fasher: The City That Anarchists Support in Its Self-Defense

https://cnt-ait.info/2025/04/15/el-fasher/

لماذا تصبح أناركيًا في السودان؟

(text translated here : Why Would You Become an Anarchist in Sudan? (https://cnt-ait.info/2025/02/09/why-would-you-become-an-anarchist-in-sudan)

(Al Amal) / Hope is a bilingual (Arabic / English) bimonthly issued jointly by the Anarchist Group of Sudan, CNT-AIT France and their friends in Tunisia and worldwide. It also published in Arabic / French (here: )

It aims to build bridges between anarchists from different continents, in continuation of the campaign of solidarity with the anarchists of Sudan.

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