Diverging Trajectories in 2025 Employment Contract Reforms in Egypt and Tunisia: Job Security, Precariousness and Social Dialogue

Abstract This article examines the 2025 reforms of employment contracts in Egypt and Tunisia. Historically, both countries reinforced job security after independence but curtailed it through neoliberal reforms: in Tunisia, fixed-term contracts (FTCs) were permitted for permanent activities up to four years in exchange for stronger protections for permanent workers; in Egypt, FTCs could run up to five years and be indefinitely renewed, a trade-off linked to strikes’ legalisation. The 2025 reforms, however, marked a trajectory divergence. Tunisia curbs precariousness by restricting FTCs. It establishes the permanent contract as default, limits FTCs to exceptional cases, permits one renewal and grants FTC workers priority for permanent positions. By contrast, Egypt enables more permissive standards. It allows FTCs for permanent tasks with indefinite renewals and consolidates employer discretion in open-ended contracts by reinforcing legal ambiguity: one provision conditions termination on notice, another requires a ‘legitimate and sufficient justification’. Anecdotal accounts of social dialogue surrounding these reforms suggest, at times—particularly when government objectives were at stake—the process favoured control over deliberation, with irregularities functioning as instrumental tactics, including successive draft circulation, secret negotiations, delays, sidelining of labour’s positions and, in certain instances, their outright exclusion.