female workers struck, most of whom were Jewish.27 From March until the end
of May 1911, 400 female workers and 90 male workers went out on strike at the
Régie tobacco factory. They were joined by male and female workers from other
tobacco factories such as Hasan kif, Keyazis Emin, and Herzog.28 The workers
demanded wage increases in accordance with the cost of living index, the hiring
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133
of unionized workers, wages that would be paid according to hours worked rather
than production quotas, and the shortening of the work day to 7–8 hours in the
winter, and 10–11 hours in the summer:
The Jewish, Greek, and Turkish workers reorganized and decided on work
hours. The men would work between 7:30 and 16:30 whereas the girls
would work between 8:00 and 17:00. The workers would have two fifteen
minute breaks during the day. There were different meal/rest times for men
and women; the men would take a break when it suited them, whereas the
women’s break time was signaled by a bell.29
One of the main demands during negotiations was that those jobs considered male
tasks would not be appropriated to female workers, and that male workers would
not sort tobacco leaves with the young girls. In this way, work would be assured
for both male and female workers.30 After long negotiations between workers’
representatives and the employers, the strike ended. The wages of female workers
were cut, whereas the value of male workers’ wages was safeguarded. When the
400 female workers realized that their wages had been reduced, they insisted
on continuing the negotiations by themselves; and when the employers refused
to speak with them, the young girls called for a strike of their own. The male
workers who reported to work found the factory gates locked: “The young girls
are on strike and the men are in a lockout.” As a sign of sympathy with the Régie
factory, the owners of Hasan kif, Herzog, and Keyazis Emin also closed down
their factories.31
The young girls’ struggle for fair wages and working conditions sped up their
integration into the socialist movement. Female tobacco workers were the first to
establish a vocational sector of their own within the tobacco workers’ union. This
sector was established after the young girls proved their determination and their
independence. Their struggles took place both in the factories and on the street,
against both their employers and their “brethren” workers who, when it came to
the issues of wages and “efficiency” lay-offs, did not hesitate to sacrifice their
female counterparts. Each time the young girls felt that their employers or the
workers’ committees were treating them underhandedly, they called for a strike
and took to the streets to demonstrate. Thus, the young girls who worked in the
tobacco industry of Salonika became active members of the working class; on
the floors of the tobacco factories they acquired an awareness of their rights as
workers and, for a limited period of time (that is, until marriage), a new sense of
self was formed—one that began to demand rights, to take a stand, and to make
decisions not only on the factory floor but also within workers’ organizations. By
1912, the factory owners could only dream of employing a young Jewish girl who
was not a member of the trade union.32
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Changes in Space
As for the class struggle, its role in the production of space
is a cardinal one in that this production is performed solely
by classes, fractions of classes and groups representative of
classes. Today more than ever, the class struggle is inscribed
in space.33
Henri Lefebvre
Historical sources show that, as in other Jewish communities, the Jewish woman
of Salonika was not an independent entity but an inseparable part of the family.
In the patriarchal family and society of Salonika, the life of the family, or, more
exactly, the life of the women and children, was conducted not in accordance with
official space and time—whether it be “government time” or “Jewish time”—
but in terms of more internal, restricted dimensions. Besides the private/public
dichotomy, other dichotomies existed in the areas of dress, language, and speech
as well.
Female workers of the tobacco industry were the first to shatter the separation
between the public and private spheres. Approximately 4,000 workers participated
in the May First march of 1911—men, women, children, and their entire families.
Speeches were delivered in four languages. Ninety-five percent of the participants
were Jews, the rest being Bulgarians, Greeks, and Turks. Public space was
converted into a political marketplace.
The march met with the disapproval of many, not only because of the social
and political identity of the marchers, but also because for the first time, women
and children had participated as well.34 The events of May 1911, when thousands
of male and female tobacco workers, along with their families, occupied and took
charge of their own space, marked a new starting point.35 Beyond the fact that the
march was a show of workers’ strength, it was also seen as presenting a threat to
public order. Whereas female workers demanding equal rights in the factories had
only presented a problem for their employers, girls and young women marching
in the streets presented a threat to the traditional order of society and to its
institutions. As Lefebvre has argued, “The distinction between the within and the
without is as important to the spatial realm as to that of politics. The critique of
what happens within has no meaning except by reference to what exists ‘outside’
as possibility.”36 One could summarize the situation, using an old Jewish adage,
as: “The King’s daughter has stepped outside!”37
In April 1913,38 the female tobacco workers once more went on strike, and the
male workers joined them. Until then, these young girls had had no say in the
decisions taken by the workers’ committees; now they demanded to participate
in the decision-making process.39 On 20 February 1914, on the eve of one of the
largest strikes, five hundred young girls participated in the Convention of Female
Tobacco Workers, which addressed the issue of the place of women workers
within trade unions.40
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135
The strike of 1913 had apparently settled the matter of gender relations within
the tobacco workers’ union. The young girls’ participation in the various struggles
and demonstrations and their demand for inclusion in the decision-making process
proved “that the girls have the energy and discipline needed to wage battle.”41
The Class Consciousness of Female Workers
Once men understood that the social and class struggle would not succeed without
the participation of female workers, they encouraged them to organize and take
part in the union’s activities. The young girls internalized the concepts of class
ideology and social equality both as workers and as women.42 Within the Jewish
; community of Salonika, a common expression was: “The most respectable
woman is she who speaks little.”43 The fact that these young girls were speaking
out and demanding equality and active participation illustrated a change in their
consciousness. They now used their voice and participated in discussions that
were both political and public. The female tobacco workers possessed both
an ideology, and the words to express it. For example, Orico Baruch, Miriam
Sasbone, Esterina Kovo, Riketa Filo, Matilda Ashkenazi, Sonhola Algava, and
others donated money to the strikers’ fund, proclaiming: “Down with scabs!
Long live the true unionists!”44 Not all the young girls took an active part in the
political activities of the Socialist-Communist Party45 and in the struggles within
the factories. They admired the courage of spirit and the actions of those who did
participate, but shied away from them for fear of losing their jobs.46
There was a small core of young girls who, with the encouragement of members
of their families who were themselves active in the Party and the unions, led
the rest of the girls and urged them to take part in the strikes, demonstrations,
and assemblies: “There is no shame in coming to the workers’ club. Shame is
remaining enslaved. … There is no shame in forming a trade union. Shame is
being without a union and allowing the patrons to suck our blood!”47 “The Union
is Power.”48
These young Jewish girls looked toward Europe as their model: “Girls, prepare
yourselves! Fellow female workers wake up from your deadening slumber;
prepare yourselves for the new life! Why aren’t we looking towards our sisters in
Europe? They take part in everything that happens in the workers’ movement and
even demand their right to be elected as representatives. And we?”49
In 1913, at an evening organized by the Socialist Party, one of the men read
a monologue written by the Italian revolutionary author Ida Negri, a socialist
Jewish woman, and one of the young girls spoke in support of the women taking
to the streets to fight for their rights, side by side with the men.50
However, the militant stance of the female tobacco workers remained limited
to the field of work relations, expressed in the factories and on the streets. The
female workers of Salonika did not succeed in attaining the same achievements
as their socialist sisters in western Europe. In particular, they did not succeed in
implementing the power of women’s solidarity—which they presented toward
their employers and their fellow male workers—within the house and the family.
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Ethnic Strife within Class Conflict
In their attempts to break the lines of solidarity of the tobacco workers’ organization,
and in their endeavors toward decreasing production costs, employers exploited
the ethnic differences among the workers. After the incorporation of the city into
Greece in October 1912, the strikes and demonstrations in which workers took
part had repercussions within spheres beyond those of class and gender. Relations
between the Jews, Greeks, and Muslims of the city were greatly disturbed. It
would appear that a number of Muslim factory owners felt the new political
reality held new possibilities for breaking the tobacco trade union, the majority of
whose members were Jewish.
In December 1912, the tobacco company of Hasan kif, under Muslim
( Dönme 51) ownership, decided to end the employment of Jewish workers, men
and young girls alike, and proclaimed that from that day on, the company would
hire only Greeks.52 This tactic, however, did not succeed, as Greek and Turkish
workers supported their Jewish counterparts.53 The support of Greek and Turkish
workers for the class struggle was also expressed in their donations to the strike
fund of the Socialist Federation. Ambel İsa, a Turkish yoghurt vendor, donated to
the fund, declaring “To the Class Struggle!”54 Istiryo Nikopoulos, a Greek tobacco
worker from the Régie factory, made a donation to the fund as well, while Jewish
workers donated proclaiming “Ethnic propaganda will not succeed.”55
After the employers’ attempt to replace their male workers with female workers
failed, and they discovered that the presumably compliant female workers were
precisely those who were involved in organizing the workers and stood at the
forefront of the strikes, they tried to replace the Jewish female workers who were
unionized with Turkish and non-union Jewish female workers. In an attempt to
by-pass the strikers who had congregated at the gates of the factory in order to
deny entrance to non-union Jewish female workers, the employers disguised
these latter in Turkish garb ( ferâce), complete with veils covering their faces.56
This attempt failed, however, as the striking Jewish girls revealed the true identity
of the disguised workers and formed committees to consolidate the loyalty of all
female workers. During the Great Tobacco Strike of 1914, the Jewish girls once
again uncovered the faces of the strikebreakers. Only this time they discovered
that behind the veils were not disguised Jewish girls but Muslim girls who had
come to Salonika from villages where the tobacco was grown. They were not
organized in a union, did the men’s work of sorting, and worked for a pittance
and a loaf of bread.57 In the heat of defending their place of work, their wages,
the very sustenance of their families, and their hopes for the future, the Jewish
female tobacco workers ripped the veils off the faces of the Muslim girls. Nine
Jewish girls were arrested by the police for the crime of offending the religious
sensitivities of the Muslim workers.58 In response to these events and to an article
in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Asır [New Age], which was published in Salonika,
Chief Rabbi Meir summoned representatives of the employers and of the Socialist
Federation and implored them to calm the situation. At the same time, Rabbi Meir
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137
wrote an article for the newspapers in which he denounced the actions of the
young Jewish girls.
The conflict that arose between the Jewish and Greek workers organized in their
separate unions on the one hand, and the hungry Muslim female workers on the
other, acquired a religious and national character. The strikes and demonstrations
that took place in the midst of the crisis of the First World War deeply disturbed
the relations between the Jews, Muslims, and Greeks of the city. The positive
relationship between the Jewish and Muslim communities, who had shared a
sense of being “the outsider” and of alienation as a result of the annexation of
their birthplace by Greece, was now damaged, while a spirit of patriotism surged
among the Greek population. The strike hurt the principal export of Macedonia—
tobacco—and consequently the income of the Greek government. The Greek
newspapers Nea Alithya [ Νέα Αλήθεια, “The New Truth”] and Macedonia
[ Μακεδονία], referred to the striking Greek workers as “Greek patriots.” However,
the Jewish workers, who protested in the streets carrying red flags and wearing
workers of the city in an effort to sabotage Greece’s endeavor to gain the approval
of the League of Nations for the annexation of Salonika.60
A Socialist Popular Culture
Collective cognitive maps are inter-subjective in the sense
that members of the same cultural, economic, ethnic …
group, or people living in the same neighborhood, share
similar cognitive maps.61
Juval Portugali
The need for cultural expressions separate from those of the Jewish, Greek, and
Turkish bourgeoisie can be seen by inspection of the social meeting places of the
working class. Throughout the period discussed in this article, the promenade along
the beach and the coffeehouses near the White Tower were the locales of choice
for the leisure of the Jewish, Greek, and Turkish middle-classes. Attending to the
many who came to enjoy the breeze off the sea, the magnificent sunsets, and the
“Parisian” atmosphere were coffeehouses with names bearing ethnic associations
such as Nea Hellas [ Νέα Έλλάς, The New Greece], Eptanisus [ Επτάνησος, The
Seven Islands],62 Olympos [Όλυμπος, Olympus], Anadolu [Anatolia], La Turquie
[Turkey], and others.63 Though it might be argued that the patrons of coffeehouses
did not necessarily place any importance on the names of these establishments,
we see that socialists preferred to sit at the café El Amaneser [in Ladino, The
Dawn], El Muevo Mundo [in Ladino, The New World], Café International, and
Café Cristal,64 situated in the northwest of the city near Yeni Kapı [in Turkish, The
New Gate], adjacent to their neighborhoods and the tobacco factories. In short,
the names and locations of the coffeehouses suggest that different groups lived
in the same territory and shared the same space, but at the same time operated in
different cognitive environments.
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The class consciousness of the young girls was formulated on the floors of
the production halls and then strengthened in the neighborhood. Most of the
workers lived in close proximity to the factories near the Vardar Gate and in
the neighborhoods of Baron Hirsch and Régie Vardar (so named because of its
proximity to the Régie tobacco factories). The family was an inseparable part of
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