Powerful Tunisian union announces national strike in June, raising pressure on president
By Tarek Amara
TUNIS (Reuters) -Tunisia’s highly effective UGTT union on Tuesday known as a nationwide public strike for June after the federal government refused to extend wages, an escalation which will hinder the federal government’s efforts to succeed in a cope with the Worldwide Financial Fund.
Tunisia faces a critical monetary disaster and is in search of a $4 billion mortgage from the IMF seen as essential to thrust back nationwide chapter, in change for unpopular reforms, together with cuts in meals and power subsidies and wage freezes.
With greater than 1 million members, the UGTT is Tunisia’s strongest political drive. The strike on June 16 will current the largest problem but to President Kais Saied after his seizure of broad powers and strikes to one-man rule.
The UGTT has rejected proposed spending cuts and as an alternative desires wage will increase for state employees as inflation reached a document stage of seven.5% in April.
The union mentioned the strike would come with 159 state-owned corporations together with airways and maritime and land transport corporations.
The UGTT is demanding a direct reform plan for corporations that doesn’t embrace promoting them.
Public corporations are struggling a extreme monetary disaster involving billions of {dollars} resulting from mounting losses, money owed and will increase within the variety of staff.
Saied, who took government energy and dissolved parliament to rule by decree, has since mentioned he’ll change the democratic 2014 structure with a brand new structure by way of referendum on July 25.
The president’s opponents accuse him of a coup that has undermined the democratic features of the 2011 revolution that triggered the Arab Spring, however he says his strikes have been authorized and wanted to avoid wasting Tunisia from a protracted political disaster.
Whereas Stated focuses on altering Tunisian politics, critics say he doesn’t pay sufficient consideration to the North African nation’s collapsing financial system. He has repeatedly mentioned that Tunisia is wealthy however that the political elite stole the individuals’s cash, which his opponents describe as populism.
Tunisia’s price range deficit will develop to 9.7% of GDP this 12 months, in contrast with a beforehand anticipated 6.7%, resulting from a stronger U.S. greenback and sharp improve in grain and power costs, the central financial institution governor, Marouan Abassi, mentioned this month.
(Reporting By Tarek Amara; Enhancing by Kevin Liffey and Jonathan Oatis)
