The State began to pay the workers more after their collective actions evolved into a national movement in 2016, but they were still paid less than minimum wage according to Akremi. The UGTT’s intervention in the issue also started the same year.
Baraa Baroua, a ‘site worker’ at Ministry of Youth and Sports youth center in Gabes and a divorced mother with three daughters, joined the national movement because she believed that “the government would not move unless I protest against the injustice I went through for years.”
It was our continued protests that pushed the government to implement what’s written in the laws, though only partially,
Baroua told Meshkal/Nawaat.
It took another four years of protests and strikes-sometimes on a monthly basis-before the government and the UGTT finally reached an agreement in October 2020. The two stakeholders consider the agreement a successful deal. Noureddine Taboubi, UGTT General Secretary, described it as a “step forward in the path of partnership between the government and the union.”
The October Agreement, a Success?
The agreement, however, has drawn criticism from many ‘site workers’ because it excludes those aged between 45 and 55 from the category of beneficiaries. From the government’s viewpoint, the age limit set in the agreement with the UGTT was made in accordance with the decree law 1031 of 2006 which stipulates the upper age limit (40) for the employment of public servants. According to this law, an exception is made for those who are older than 40 but registered themselves as job seekers when they were younger than 40. In all cases, the maximum age of the candidate for public sector employment must not exceed the age of 45.
Some ‘site workers’ believe the deal’s age limit is designed to force a large segment of them to retire. The October agreement did not address the fact that these workers were hired directly by and worked for the state and public institutions for at least seven years (given the fact that, according to Akremi, there was no new recruitment made after 2013), and yet they were left out from the public employment system. It is worth noting that Tunisian law stipulates that even private sector companies must provide permanent employment for those who worked for more than four years at the same companies, although there are well-documented loopholes that many private employers use to avoid this.
I didn’t know until 2015 that we were categorized as if we were private sector workers and the promise to offer me a permanent job was made according to the private sector employment law, which doesn’t make sense at all. We have been working as hard as other public employees, if not harder than them,
Akermi said.
Zammouri also noted that “it is wrong to recognize our job as part of private sectors. There’s no ministry in this country that doesn’t rely on our labor. We are asked to work to serve public institutions, even in the time of COVID-19.”