Paraschiva B. Ion was a notable yet mostly forgotten figure in the history of Romanian labour activism in the interwar period. As a woman trade union leader in the male-dominated interwar labour movement, Ion played a key role in advocating for the labour-related rights of the women who constituted the bulk of the workforce at the Belvedere Tobacco Factory in Bucharest. Her career, spanning the early 1920s to the early 1940s, highlights the transformation of trade union work on behalf of women in interwar Europe. During this time in Romania, laws were adopted that aimed at restricting and controlling how workers organized. Little is known about her biography beyond her trade union activities, which were mentioned in the interwar Romanian press.

Ion’s rise within the trade union movement was remarkable in an environment where men activists tended to represent workers, even in workplaces where women workers were the overwhelming majority. Starting as a young, unskilled worker at Belvedere, she quickly became active in the factory workers’ labour struggles, possibly acting against radical communist workers in a 1920 strike. By the late 1920s, she was a key representative of workers, negotiating labour contracts and pushing for better working conditions. She was committed to reform-oriented legal trade unionism within the General Confederation of Labour, the leading social democratic trade union body in Romania.

Ion’s activism was shaped by a pragmatic approach to labour negotiations. Unlike radical communist organizers, she pursued improvements for workers through institutionalized processes, advocating for wage increases, better medical and maternity leave policies, and overall worker protections. After the 1920 strike, tobacco workers were prohibited from striking and had to resolve disputes with management through an arbitration process in the labour court. In 1924, she was among the workers’ representatives who signed an arbitration agreement that secured a 25 percent wage increase and paid holidays, medical leave, and maternity leave; this was an important achievement, but the agreement failed to abolish the piece-rate production system. The abolition of piece-rate production was a major demand of the workers, as they received very low pay per piece – that is, for the cigarettes they rolled or packed. In general, this wage system that paid for products delivered by a worker was seen as more strenuous, precarious, and overall disadvantageous than compensating the labourer for time spent working (time rate). Ion’s trade union work in the 1920s and early 1930s exemplifies the compromises that a reformist trade unionist in a state-run industry had to make.

In 1929, Ion became a member of the executive committee of a new nationwide branch union, the Union of Workers from Match and Tobacco Factories in Romania (UWMTR). In the UWMTR in 1931, she fought against wage cuts resulting from a government austerity program and co-authored a memorandum on the poor working conditions of workers in the Chișinău tobacco factory, which – like Belvedere – was a factory owned by the Romanian state at the time. By 1935, Ion was the president of the UWMTR, but because of broader political changes, the union was no longer as effective as it had been several years before.

The trade union career of Ion was marked by controversy. Her colleagues repeatedly accused her of being too close to management. She participated in factory-led cultural propaganda activities, and in 1942, she was even promoted to a managerial position, leading some to question her loyalties. By 1944, when the communists took control of the labour movement, she was denounced as an “axe handle” – a collaborator with the factory management. After this public condemnation, her name was largely erased from later state socialist histories of labour activism.

Despite the criticism she faced, Ion’s story is illustrative of the challenges women trade unionists faced in the Romanian labour movement during the interwar years. She fought for women’s representation in trade unions and played – while she could – an important role in shaping labour policies in the tobacco industry. Her biography, marred by controversy about her alleged betrayal of workers’ interests, offers glimpses into the possibilities and limitations faced by reformist trade unionists in interwar Romania and the region.

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