Tunisia: government agrees to increase state employee wages

Tunisia’s government and the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) have reached an agreement for the wages of state employees to be increased by 3.5 per cent, Anadolu has reported.

“The agreement expected to be signed stipulates an increase in wages for the years 2023, 2024 and 2025, provided that the increase will be disbursed starting from 2023,” confirmed local sources. Tunis Afrique Presse said that the wage increase will benefit around 680,000 state employees.

According to UGTT Secretary-General Noureddine Taboubi, negotiations with the government covered many aspects, including the deterioration of citizens’ purchasing power, the increase in wages and the issue of poor families.

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Government spokesperson and Minister of Employment and Vocational Training Nasreddine Nsibi said on Monday that an agreement had been reached with the UGTT on most points except for a single point of contention related to the percentage of wage increases for the coming years. “The negotiations almost succeeded in agreeing to set the deadlines related to the increase, and only one point of contention related to the rate of increase remained,” Nsibi told journalists.

Tunisia is suffering from an economic and financial crisis, which has been exacerbated by the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, in addition to the political instability that the country has experienced since President Kais Saied imposed exceptional measures on 25 July last year.

The International Monetary Fund has called on the Tunisian government to control the state wage bill to achieve public finance stability.

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