Strikes raise tensions between unions, Islamist govt in Tunisia

The birthplace of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, the city of Sidi Bouzid, was the scene of strikes and protests on Thursday as tensions rose between powerful unions and the ruling Islamist party. Workers went on strike in Kasserine, Gafsa and Sfax, whose eponymous capital is Tunisia’s second city, as well as Sidi Bouzid, where the uprising started on December 17, 2010 that unseated former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The closure of the largest private and public employers in those areas was called by regional branches of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), AFP news agency reported, with only small shops and cafes open for business. Hundreds of protesters also marched in the Gafsa and Sidi Bouzid regions, chanting slogans denouncing the Islamist party. “We demand the resignation of the government,” “Ennahda has sold Tunisia,” and “Long live the UGTT, the country’s biggest force,” the activists shouted. On Tuesday, several hundred Islamists armed with knives and sticks charged a gathering of members of the UGTT union in the capital and broke office windows with stones. Police had to intervene to separate the two groups. “The UGTT decided to go on strike on Dec. 13, after the attack on the central trade unions and trade unionists on Tuesday,” the union said in a statement on Wednesday. The announcement came as Tunisia prepared to mark the second anniversary of a street peddler’s self-immolation on Dec. 17, 2010, that led to a revolution in Tunisia and set the region on the path to uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. The UGTT, Tunisia’s main labor union, said the strike achieved a 95-percent observance rate in Gafsa, a mining region prone to social unrest. The action was seen as a prelude to a nationwide general strike called for December 13 by the UGTT to denounce an attack on its headquarters this week that it says was carried out by Islamist militants close to the ruling party Ennahda. Weeks of escalating tensions between the union and Ennahda, seen as the two dominant political forces in Tunisia, culminated on Tuesday when UGTT members demonstrating at their head office were attacked by pro-government activists. The Islamists in turn accused the UGTT of orchestrating the confrontation. Just days earlier, intense clashes between police and disaffected youths in the town of Siliana, southwest of Tunis, left some 300 people wounded, after a strike and protests over poor living conditions degenerated into violence. The call for a nationwide strike next Thursday is only the third by the UGTT, which has a membership of 500,000, since its foundation in the 1940s. The first was in 1978 and the second on January 12, 2011 -- two days before the fall of Ben Ali’s regime. The office of Islamist Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali on Thursday urged staff on strike to return to work and called on Tunisian organizations “to advocate a mollifying language (that enables us) to overcome these difficulties.” Ennahda’s veteran leader Rached Ghannouchi strongly criticized the UGTT, calling it a “radical opposition” group, and charging that its calls to strike had “political and not social motives.” Clashes, strikes and attacks, including by hardline Islamists, have multiplied across Tunisia in the run up to the second anniversary of the revolution, plunging the country into a political impasse. Many Tunisians feel bitterly disappointed by the failure of the revolution to improve their lives, especially in the country’s marginalized interior which suffers from a chronic lack of development and high unemployment. During last week’s violence, President Moncef Marzouki said the Islamist-led coalition government was not meeting the expectations of its people and called for a cabinet reshuffle, but Jebali did not respond. He warned that Tunisia was at a crossroads between “the road to ruin and the road to recovery.”