Page 44 - The Economist20171214

44 Middle East and Africa The Economist December 16th 2017
2 decade its production has fallen by 29%, Aharon Yehudah Leib Shteinman
even though its workforce has grown by
14%. Underthe agreement, the government A rabbi without equal
urged private oil and gas firms to hire 1,500
locals, but they do not need the workers ei-
JERUSALEM
ther. Even Nawara, a project that is expect- The complicated legacyofan ultra-Orthodoxleader
ed to increase Tunisia’s annual gas produc-
tion by25% startingnextyear, requires only E WAS exceptional in several ways. sion to re-establish the fabled yeshivas
about 200 full-time employees. HBrought up in the shtetls ofwhat is (Torah academies) ofEurope, which were
The UGTT has played an outsize role in now Belarus, Aharon Yehudah Leib destroyed duringthe Holocaust. It would
Tunisian politics since it was established in Shteinman was the only memberofhis not be easy: many ofIsrael’s leaders were
1946. It participated in the struggle forinde- family to survive the Holocaust. He then born into religious families, but had
pendence in the 1950s. (French colonialists devoted his life to buildingthe ultra- ditched traditional Judaism in favour of
killed itsfounder.) The autocratswho ruled OrthodoxJewish community in Israel. secularZionism. They saw ultra-Ortho-
Tunisia for the next 54 years occasionally Such was his piety that otherreligious dox(orHaredi) Judaism as an anachro-
persecuted trade unionists, but the UGTT Jews came to regard him as Gadol Ha- nism that would soon die out. David
remained influential, using strikes to win dor—the greatest ofhis generation. But he Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister,
better working conditions. During the remained exceedingly modest, sleeping allowed 400 yeshiva students to be ex-
Arab spring it helped to organise protests on the same mattress forsixdecades. empt from military service, believing that
thatbroughtdown Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Duringthe day it would serve as a sofa they would remain a tiny minority.
the former dictator. In 2013, when new foranyone wantinghis guidance. Parents, But Rabbi Shteinman and his col-
protests threatened Tunisia’s nascent de- ministers and tycoons passed through his leagues not only rebuilt the yeshivas,
mocracy, it helped mediate an end to the damp one-bedroom flat. which had traditionally been the pre-
crisis, which earned it a share of the Nobel “Ten people at my funeral would be serve ofgifted students, they also encour-
peace prize in 2015. enough,” wrote Rabbi Shteinman in his aged all Haredi men to join them and
Butthe UGTTisalso atthe heartof Tuni- will. As it happened, hundreds ofthou- devote theirlives to studyingthe Torah.
sia’s economic problems. One of the big- sands ofultra-Orthodoxmen turned out Many tookup theircall. Today tens of
gest drags on growth is the bloated bu- to mourn theirleader, who died on De- thousands ofyeshiva students are ex-
reaucracy. Under pressure from the UGTT, cember12th at the age of104. empted from military service, breeding
the state went on a hiring spree after the Rabbi Shteinman was one ofa small resentment amongthose who serve.
revolution, adding tens of thousands of group ofrabbis who arrived in the new The cost to taxpayers is enormous.
penpushers. Around 800,000 Tunisians state ofIsrael in the early1950s on a mis- Around10% ofIsrael’s population are
now work for the government, out of a Haredim, and halfofall Haredi men
workforce of 4m. Public wages eat up al- spend theirdays studying, while depend-
most 14% of GDP, among the highest per- ingon state benefits to support their
centages in the world. families. “The rabbis led theirrevolution,
The UGTT has fought against attempts but didn’t have an end-game planned for
to cutgovernmentspending. Itcallsprivati- its success,” says Amiram Gonen of
sation a “red line”. And itoften cripples the Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.
country with strikes and protests. Indeed, In public Rabbi Shteinman called for
it called for the anti-government demon- life-longdevotion to the Torah and for-
strations in 2013. In 2016 it closed the postal bade secularlearning. In private, though,
service for days to protest against the treat- he acknowledged that the ascetic life he
ment of a single worker. Threats of a walk- led was not foreveryone. He discreetly
out last December forced the government gave his blessingto thousands ofHaredi
to drop plans for a public-sector pay freeze men who sought to leave the yeshivas
in 2017. and enlist in the army orpursue a secular
The unionsare particularlystrong in Tu- education and get a job. He faced critics
nisia’s interior. That has harmed the re- on both sides. Fanatical rabbis accused
gion. Take Gafsa, the centre of the phos- him offorsakingultra-Orthodoxideals.
phate industry. Tunisia was once the Reformists wanted him publicly to en-
fifth-largest exporter of the mineral. Over dorse vocational training. Sadly, the
half the country’s output came from a community he helped to build remains
state-owned plant in the city. After the rev- woefully unprepared forthe challenges
olution, unionscalled strikesand demand- The greatest, according to some ofthe 21st century.
ed more jobs. So the plant hired 2,500 new
workers over the next three years, increas-
ing the workforce by 51%. But the strikes that rose up against MrBen Ali. The UGTT has shown that it can be
continued and production fell from 8m In 2016 the IMF approved a four-year, pragmatic. One of Tunisia’s biggest fiscal
tonnes in 2010 to just 3.3m in 2013. The in- $2.9bn loan for Tunisia. But it froze the sec- problemsisthe pension system, which has
dustry has yet to recover. ond tranche in February after the govern- a deficit of1.1bn dinars ($440m) 65% higher
Union bosses counter that, without ment failed to make reforms, such as elim- than justtwo yearsago. Successive govern-
protests, the government would continue inating 10,000 public-sector jobs. Instead ments proposed modest reforms, such as
to neglect the interior—at its own peril. Lotfi Bensassi, Mr Chahed’s economic ad- raisingthe retirementage from 60 to 62. For
“We’ve become an exporter of terrorism,” viser, is aiming for 4-5% economic growth, years the UGTT opposed them. But in Oc-
says Noureddine Taboubi of the UGTT. so that public wages gobble up just 12% of tober it backed down. “When they are
Some 6,000 Tunisians joined IslamicState, GDP by 2020. That is still high—and unreal- able, they push,” says Mr Bensassi. “But
more than from any other country. Many istic. The World Bank thinks growth has they recognise the problems.” Tunisia
of them come from the same poor areas been around 2% this year. needs them to do that more often. 7