1925 -
Cofounder of the Moroccan Labor Union.
In 1955, after serving jail sentences for having organized a general strike, Mahjoub Ben Seddiq and Tayyib Bouazza founded the Union Marocaine du Travail (UMT). Ben Seddiq has been its secretary-general since 1960. The UMT, which initially was closely affiliated with the Istiqlal Party, was the first - and for a time the most important - all-Moroccan trade union. Ben Seddiq, one of the Istiqlal's "Young Turks" during the late 1950s, is also considered to be one of the founders of the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP), which broke away from the Istiqlal in 1959. He formally disassociated himself from the UNFP in January 1963, while remaining associated for a time with "loyal opposition" politics. Ben Seddiq was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in July 1967 for undermining the authority of the state after he sharply criticized the government's decision to block the firing of Jewish employees in state-owned firms in the aftermath of the Arab - Israel War of 1967, alleging that the government was colluding with Zionists.
In subsequent years the 700,000-member UMT was generally less confrontational, especially in comparison to the two other competing labor confederations - the Confédération Démocratique du Travail (CDT), which is affiliated with the Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (USFP), and the Union Générale des Travailleurs Marocains (UGTM), which is affiliated with the Istiqlal Party. Ben Seddiq himself adopted a lower public profile, and assumed the post of secretary-general of Royal Air Maroc, the Moroccan national airline. In 1995 the heads of the three unions held an unprecedented joint meeting during which Ben Seddiq called for unity among the unions as a prerequisite to a social pact that would enable genuine democratic change. Although real unity remained out of reach, the unions did exhibit greater coordination.
Bibliography
Waterbury, John. The Commander of the Faithful. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1970.
— BRUCE MADDY-WEITZMAN
