Each May 1st, speeches flourish. We celebrate the work, we honor workers, we promise better conditions, we brandish dignity through work as a national standard. But behind the banners and official speeches, a question persists, deaf, almost taboo: is the Tunisian really hardworker?
Let us hear: it is not a question here of judging a people in terms of a few shots, but of making a substantive question. What does our work relationship look like today? Is it motivated by the requirement, the rigor, the taste for doing well? Or is it increasingly part of the logic of the slightest effort, the bypassed system, of the “mchi chghol” so trivialized?
On the one hand, we see Tunisians who sort, in the fields, workshops, hospitals, or in the corridors overloaded with an administration. On the other hand, there are chronic delays, absences without justification, productivity at half mast, and a sometimes devalued work culture.
The truth is undoubtedly between the two. Because the Tunisian knows how to work, and proves it every day in the informal, in exile, in adversity. But why does this energy not always translate into public space, services, businesses, in administrations? Could this be the frame that bridles the ambitions? Lack of recognition? The lack of perspectives?
So, was it the Tunisian who changed, or was it the framework in which he works who used it? Is the effort still recognized? Does the merit pays? Or have we let the idea that only the piston or resourcefulness are used to move?
May 1 should be an opportunity, not only to defend the rights of workers, but also to rehabilitate the value of the work itself. Whoever builds, who raises, who transforms. Not the work suffered, routine or distorted, but the one that gives meaning, which connects, which makes a company.
