Collective Memory in Collective Action: The ugtt and the Power of Remembered Struggles in Sustaining Union Activism

Abstract This paper examines the centrality of history and collective memory in sustaining and encouraging labor militancy across different generations of union activists. Drawing on fieldwork conducted with the members of the Tunisian General Labor Union ( ugtt ), the analysis shows how the continued reproduction of a widely shared collective memory, based on the ideas of liberation, sacrifice, and martyrdom, rooted in a rich history of struggle for the formation and protection of an independent trade union organization in Tunisia, has been used by subsequent generations of union activists to justify the ugtt ’s prominent place in Tunisian contemporary politics and society.