He was the Secretary General of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) since 2011. UGTT was part of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, which was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize "for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011". Along with other leaders of the Quartet, Wided Bouchamaoui, Mohammed Fadhel Mafoudh and Abdessatar Ben Moussa, Houcine Abassi traveled to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize on 10 December 2015.