The treacherous trade unionist: Paraschiva B. Ion and labour activism in the Romanian tobacco sector, 1920s to 1940s

Abstract

ABSTRACT What did it mean to be a woman labour activist in a state-owned industry in Romania before 1945? In this article, I construct a political biography of Paraschiva B. Ion, a worker and trade unionist in the “Belvedere” tobacco factory in Bucharest during the interwar period. P. B. Ion led factory- and national-level social democratic trade unions and served as an elected delegate to factory-level and municipal-level workers’ representative bodies. At the same time, she participated in labour control practices, including during the Second World War. I argue that P. B. Ion’s career illustrates how, in the interwar period, women labour activists in social democratic trade unions in Romania could become more prominent participants in labour governance on the shop floor, municipal, and national levels while not being involved in labour governance at the international scale. Like other trade unionists in Europe, at times, P.B. Ion supported certain claims made by women workers (including through expert knowledge production) and at other times restrained them. I position P. B. Ion’s activism in a domestic context marked by competing labour agitation and organizing in the tobacco sector, activities shaped by a legal framework that hindered labour organizing.