TUNISIA A paradise for multinationals,guaranteed by agreements with the European Union


The “Ritun affair” illustrates the complicity of the authorities with neo-colonial capitalism. In Tunisia, foreign multinationals benefit from privileges granted them by the 1972 law: tax exemptions and unrestricted repatriation of their profits. They take advantage of low labour costs, with successive governments keeping the minimum wage artificially low. This trend was exacerbated by the signing in 1995 of an agreement between Ben Ali’s dictatorship and the European Union, which guarantees the absence of protective regulations on safety and working conditions for multinational corporations. Swiss trade union Unia‘s newspaper, L’Événement syndical, notes that “Ritun is the Tunisian subsidiary of Rieker, a footwear group based in Schaffhausen canton with factories in Vietnam, Slovakia, Morocco and Tunisia. The factory’s Tunisian workers earn a meagre monthly 200 euro in wages, with no health protection. Those who fight back are fired. This is what happened recently to twenty-seven employees who wanted to form a trade union (…). The heir to the company and member of the Board of Directors, Markus Rieker (80), could not care less. Through his holding company, Rieker Antistress Group, he plays a key role in Rieker’s activities. Born in Germany, he is a naturalised citizen of the Nidwalden Swiss canton and, according to Bilanz magazine, lives in a house on Lake Lucerne on a fortune of – at  a minimum –  half a billion”. (19 December).

J. A.