The union continued to operate clandestinely, playing a notable role in the eight-day strike of 1957 and establishing an underground samizdat newspaper, L'Ouvrier algérien.

The UGTA took advantage of the new environment to establish some distance from the government, and oil and coal workers struck in March 1991, obtaining various concessions including price fixing.

This political experiment was interrupted in 1992 by the military, following an Islamist victory in the polls, and the Algerian Civil War began.

The UGTA denounced the new government policy of economic liberalization under International Monetary Fund guidelines, forced on it by the untenable debt situation.

It sided strongly with the military against the generally anti-socialist Islamists, and its leader, Abdelhak Benhamouda, was assassinated by the latter on January 28, 1997.