Springboard or Wedge: Communal and Union Solidarity in Colonial Tunisia

The literature on unionization has convincingly shown how strong communal ties outside the workplace can serve as a springboard to class organization at work, but also as a wedge allowing employers or the state to divide workers. Arguing that workers communal ties can either hurt or bolster unionization is an obviously unsatisfactory answer, so what then can explain why one happens instead of the other? As an exploratory theory building exercise, I offer contrasting trajectories of dock and mine workers in colonial Tunisia. Tunis dockworkers were among the first Tunisian workers to organize and the core of the first nationalist union, but starting in the 1930s found themselves constantly divided between Tunisian and Algerian members, and ultimately between opposite sides of the cold war. In contrast, mine workers in the Gafsa basin were comparatively late to unionize, with most early strikes ethnically bound and thus too small to be effective, but starting in the mid 1930s would build one of the most united, cohesive, and militant labor movements of the period. Through these cases, I question both theories arguing that union and other forms of solidarity are either automatically contradictory or necessarily complementary. I also critique the argument that homogeneity promotes collective action. Instead, I suggest that the sequence of recruitment may provide a better way to understand these different outcomes. That is, unionization of single strongly connected community (as in Tunis) can make initial unionization faster but more fragile, as such foundations are easily broken by the arrival of new groups. In contrast, organizing across many different groups of workers with strong external ties (as in Gafsa) will likely be slower, but creates a much stronger foundation less vulnerable to workforce changes.