What led different imperial powers to offer radically different responses to the rise of labor unions in colonial territories? In this paper I address the question using two cases (1) French Tunisia, where anti-labor repression was more targeted and comparatively restrained, and (2) British Egypt, where union busting was far more aggressive at every level, and a national labor federation was never allowed to form. While these two colonial cases have been well studied individually and their contemporary labor movements have recently drawn the attention of several comparative works, the question of their very different colonial policies has gone largely unexamined. This leaves a serious gap in the literature, as accounts which treat colonial legacies as something of a black box from which current politics emerged cannot then explain change and variation within imperialism. To explain this question, I draw on an archival study of both colonial (the French and British Foreign ministries), and labor sources (the French CGT, British TUC and local press archives). Based on these sources, I argue that the difference between British and French colonial policy largely stems not from institutional differences at the state level, but rather in the French CGT’s policy of organizing workers in colonial territories, whereas the British TUC largely limited its involvement to consulting and training, most often as a partner of the British Embassy. Despite the many contradictions of organizing across colonial boundaries, I argue that the connections to the broader labor movement nevertheless reshaped and limited French labor policy in several crucial ways. These cases not only show the global and transnational nature of imperial state building but also the critical place of civil society.